I'm a loner and always have been.

The variety of shapes, colours and textures under her feet was, she believed, literally infinite. It must be. Each shell, each pebble, each stone had been made what it was by aeons of submarine or subglacial massage. The indiscriminate, eternal devotion of nature to its numberless particles had an emotional importance for Isserley; it put the unfairness of human life into perspective.

Proof, once again, that reality was not objective, but always waiting to be reshaped and redefined by one’s attitude.

Needs could not bully her.

Prostitution.′ He enunciates the word clearly, gazing directly into her eyes, knowing, God damn it, that he is being cruel. In the back of his mind, a kinder William Rackham watches impotently as his wife is penetrated by that single elongated word, its four slick syllables barbed midway with t’s. Agnes’s cameo face goes white as she gulps for air.

Coincidences like that served as a reminder that, variations in pigment aside, humans were all part of the same species.

Unreality was swirling all around her like the delirious miasmas.

We are all specialised forms of survivor. We lack what we fundamentally need and forge ahead regardless, hurriedly hiding our wounds, disguising our ineptitude, bluffing our way through our weaknesses.

God, Agnes has decided, is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. So, They tolerate each other, and take care of the world as best They can. Moving.

That was the sort of thing crazy people did – instinctively choosing the experiences that confirmed their own negative attitudes.