It was an accident: I collided with him between an anti-vivisectionist speaker and a man who was predicting the end of the world. I was living with a Polish Count in London at the time, and I still wasn’t sure how I’d gotten into it. When I’d walked out my mother’s front door two years earlier, closing it gently behind me so as not to wake her up, I had no such plans. In fact I had no plans at all. I had a suitcase in one hand and my purse in the other. The suitcase contained the few clothes that would still fit me, skirts with belts that could he pulled in, blouses that could be gathered and tucked; I’d had to discard a whole wardrobe over the year I’d been deflating. It was the end of June, almost my nineteenth birthday. I’d written the grade thirteen examinations and I knew I’d failed at least four papers, but the results wouldn’t be available till August. In any case I didn’t care. Aunt Lou’s fox was in my suitcase, and in my purse I had her birth certificate and the picture of us at the National Exhibition.
