I make salmon pasta with mascarpone, egg yolks and cream—I’m putting as many calories into something as I know how. She rings about the time she’s due, and asks whether it’s OK to be late.‘Sure,’ I say, ‘About how late?’‘Half an hour.’‘See you then.’I stand at the kitchen window. A man wearing gloves comes into the yard from one of the side wings, carrying a metal bucket of orange coal dust. He opens the hopper and pours it in, particles the consistency of talc, or something cremated. The hopper clangs shut in a burst of orange cloud. This dust is everywhere. When you can’t smell it, it’s still there, in the orange winter air.When Julia arrives she’s oddly polite, like a person in someone else’s house. I guess she’s used to slipping in when I’m not here. We sit down in the kitchen and I open a beer.‘Mind if I smoke?’ she asks.‘Not at all. I didn’t know you smoked.’‘I just started again,’ she says. She lights a cigarette and smokes half of it before she stubs it out.We eat and afterwards she lights another, holding it in a practised way in the cleft of her index and middle fingers, moving it around as she talks.
