She lay in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, allowing the fragments of thoughts and dreams floating around her mind to separate themselves out and slowly sink to rest in their correct places. Bits of memories, tail ends of emotions, half-thought-out wishes, all slowly sinking into their places like silver balls in a game. Only when she was sure that moving her head would not dislodge any of them did she allow herself to sit up and survey the empty room. Light was filtering in through the wooden blinds, covering the tiled floor in stripes. As she stared at the pattern she noticed a piece of white paper placed in the centre of the room, presumably for her to find. A note from Philip, she thought detachedly, and wondered whether she wanted to read it. She assumed that he had spent some portion of the night by her side—but she couldn't be sure of it. After leaving the dinner table the night before, she had gone straight to their bedroom. Finding it empty, she had taken a long bath, and read several chapters of a book of whose plot she could not now remember any detail.
