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I have a bathroom, an airy kitchen where I eat, and a living room with cream walls and dark green carpet and all my books. My books are mostly encyclopaedias and reference, although I occasionally fool around with fiction—Umberto Eco, Camus, Conan Doyle. I have a bookcase with 5 shelves and each shelf has 30 books. On some shelves, 30 is a real squeeze—the books are tucked in, buried next to their sisters until they cannot breathe. On other shelves 30 is spacious and there is room for a knick-knack from my childhood: a snow dome that says ‘Greetings from the Gold Coast’ or a peeling frame holding my parents’ yellow wedding photo. My parents have smiling faces from another age, smiling because they can’t yet know their future. Stop smiling! Run!
    The books are in alphabetical order, by title; Gray’s Anatomy snuggles next to Great Moments in Mathematics . Biography Today: Scientists and Inventors caresses A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine . In years past I have sectioned them by topic: science, medicine, mathematics. But now they are all together, mingling and flirting.
    I have a small balcony. Staying home all day gives me more time for serious counting. I still do some tutoring; five kids, cash in hand. Maths. The parents know all about me; that I make each child sit in my small kitchen and do each exercise in his book 5 times and that I don’t let the kids advance until every exercise is done. One of the mothers came to the first two sessions to make sure I wasn’t going to drop Toby from my second-storey window. I can imagine her reporting back to the others. ‘She’s mad, that’s for sure, and she couldn’t look after a whole room full of children. But she makes him do all the examples and even if he gets it wrong she explains it in a quiet voice and makes him do it again. She never loses her patience like the other teachers do. She just sits there and watches him do his sums over and over.’ I can imagine what the parents say. What everyone says. She can’t work, can’t travel. She has no proper social life. I’m sure they could come up with numbered lists of the things I can’t do. And life would be different if I didn’t count, I know that.
    But without it the world would be too big and too changeable. An endless void. I’d be lost all the time. I’d be overwhelmed.
    Another busy week has flown by, filled with counting. Went to the café. Did housework. Spoke to my niece on the phone. Received a new book, Handbook of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders , in the mail and read it. Twice. Had a weird craving for apple juice, which I don’t buy because it’s not on my shopping list. I don’t even like apples.
    It’s Friday. 13 degrees. It’s exactly 10.30 a.m. I leave the house on foot, like I do every day. 150 steps to the corner, then 400 to the next corner. 20 to cross the street. 325 to the next corner, then 25 paces to the front of the café. At exactly 10.48 a.m. I reach the café. The café is right across the road from the park. It’s a nondescript kind of place with wicker chairs and glass-topped tables. It screams Parisian. On the wall are Monets, the same prints you see in every frame shop in High Street. At the back is a grainy laminate counter with a cash register, a cake stand holding 11 banana muffins stacked in 3 layers and a candy-striped bowl for tips. I’d like to know how much is there but from the door I can’t count it.
    This is how it happens: I will walk in. I will take the first available table, starting from the top left-hand corner and proceeding around the room and inwards in a clockwise direction. I sit. Cheryl will see me from wherever she stands—behind the counter or clearing another table or delivering an order. She is tall and about fifty. (I’m working on a plan to find out, because it’s annoying not knowing how old exactly. I’m considering asking her what moisturiser do you use, because your skin looks so great for your age . Then