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climbed into bed fully clothed and hugging. The way the heavily insulated dome worked was that heat rose and kept the top a lot hotter than the bottom. There was a window above the mezzanine bed for ventilation, but if it was raining, as it was that night, it had to stay shut or the rain came in.
    In the morning, with the sun shining through the skylight, they woke up in a tropical weather system. Drenched in sweat, dry-mouthed, brains loose in their skulls, steam particles in the slanted sunlight, condensation on the rolling hills of duvet—reminiscent of North Gower at dawn—they stripped off their jumpers, gasping for air, laughing, coughing,throwing their clothes down from the mezzanine bed, until it would have just seemed unnecessarily prudish, given their night together and the genuinely sauna-like conditions, not to take all their clothes off and lie on top of the covers, breathing.
    Their matted hair, bodies shining with sweat, chests rising and falling. Patrick opened the window and let the light elliptical rain fall through onto them. It felt, in every way but one, postcoital. So, without self-consciousness, they kissed and hugged and fell back to sleep.
    Something about this experience, Patrick felt, had sealed off the possibility of them getting together. They had achieved all the awkwardness and shy chatter of good friends who have slept together, but without ever having crossed that threshold. It would have seemed oddly regressive to suggest they start any kind of courting ritual, but equally he didn’t feel able to take the bolder route and talk to her about the thing that had almost happened and whether it could actually happen. As time passed, it seemed impossible to talk to Janet about that morning. He began to suspect she wouldn’t even remember.
    Patrick managed to heave himself out of his chair and get to the kitchen cupboard. Among the other herbs, he had a jar of dried magic mushrooms that he’d picked last autumn. He needed something to try to turn his evening round and he thought they might open a few internal windows. Sitting back down, he chewed on three tiny caps, washed them down with the rest of the lassi, which he’d forgotten he was planning to keep, and tried to think of something positive.
    That was when he heard the roar of a very large animal.
    • • •
    Upstairs, in the big house, Freya and Don were in bed, each sitting up with a book and their own lamp. She had her hair tied in a side ponytail so that she could rest back against the headboard. He was rereading
Ways of Seeing
and occasionally laughing with his mouth closed, which Freya felt as a series of vibrations in the mattress. He had two pillows under his right foot for drainage.
    Closing the book, he watched his wife, then silently leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. “Silently” because eighteen years into their marriage, two years ago, Don had started to make an involuntary kiss-kiss noise (the noise didn’t sound like kisses; it sounded like a small sealed bag being opened) every time he was seeking, or was about to give her, affection. It just started one day. In the dark of the bedroom, she would hear the two quick vacuum-sealed, slightly wet noises and know that he was shortly to make contact. At the breakfast table, before his lips were on her neck, she would hear the pursed schlupping. The noise was similar to the one people make to attract the attention of a cat. She had never found his kisses repellent before, but something about the self-announcing quality of these noises—a comedian offstage, doing his own intro—really got to her. She had thought it only fair to let him know: “That thing you do, before you kiss me”—she wasn’t able to impersonate, so made a kind of chewing noise—“it’s awful, can you stop?” His small eyes widened. He had not been aware he was doing it.
    Of course he would stop, he said. From that point, whenever he made the sound he’d halt and curse. He battled his