That is what the seven weeks between the tenth of September and the nineteenth of October actually contained.

Not a plan.

A sentence, assembling itself in a man’s head during commutes, getting slightly better each time, the way a sentence does when nobody ever says it out loud to another person.

And by the nineteenth of October it was very good.

It was also, in four separate respects, untrue, and he knew that in the car, and I asked him about that too.

And he said: “Of course I knew.