she began it in the winter she turned thirty-one, in the flat above the bakery, writing before work in a small hand on foolscap. the first chapter went easily. the second went easily. by the eighth she had given up writing in the morning and was writing at night, after the dishes, in a slower hand.
the twelfth chapter ends in the middle of a sentence about a woman walking back from the harbour in late september. the woman is carrying a parcel she has not yet opened. the parcel's contents would have decided the remaining twelve chapters. she did not know what was inside, and waiting to find out turned out to be a thing one could do for the rest of one's life.
it sits now in the second drawer of the desk by the window, under a sheaf of unanswered correspondence, beside a small indecision in a cream envelope. she has not lifted it in eleven years. she has not thrown it away.