We talked smoothly for a couple of hours. I soon knew all about her past, from birth to the stairwell: how her family came to this city when she was seven and how she’d run away from home aged twelve to escape the alcoholic father who beat her mercilessly when drunk - probably because she looked so like the mother who had run away with the boss three years previously. She’d also run away from the impersonal children’s homes and the cold-hearted foster parents her damaged, rebellious nature always seemed to attract. As she optimistically neared the age where she would be finally free from the care system, she had slowly become aware that something inside her head was achingly wrong. Her exams were recently over and she was expecting good grades, but that was obviously of no concern to her now. She was going to live one day at a time, squeezing as many years as she could into the few weeks still left to her.

Her fingers were long and slender, her nails meticulously manicured and she kept taking my hand from the table, absently examining my fingers and palm as she meandered through her own lifelines. I was sure it was an innocent, childlike act for her, but it was turning me on. She was simultaneously woman and girl, a child on the cusp of adulthood - a potent combination of worldliness and innocent. She was very beautiful, and looked at me with an expression of total trust - almost of love. I suspected it was natural, simply her manner and though it was a little disconcerting to begin with it became very seductive, strangely addictive. She was open and honest and living in the moment. Very quickly I felt very, very close to her.

Death is a powerful condition to be around: among other things, I’ve found it can create an insistent need to procreate - not necessarily in its victim, but in everyone else in its shadow. I remember being appalled at how I was turned on after an old school friend’s funeral. Appalled and confused. Still, it didn’t stop me: I gave a mutual friend a lift home from the cemetery; she asked me in for coffee; we exchanged a single, knowing look then tore each other’s clothes off; we fucked each other, every way we could think of; over and over. She obviously felt the same natural instinct as me, the drive to create new life out of death. We were passionate, desperate, animal. Between the panting and sighing, the silence and the crying we talked about our remarkable hunger as we tried to alleviate the guilt we both felt. We concluded that Linda, our wonderful friend, would have been pleased to see us being so alive, so human, so loving… and would be looking down applauding us as we simultaneously celebrated both our ‘being alive’ and Linda’s own short life. In this way we confirmed our will to continue to fight against the inevitable.

‘I have to go.’ I didn’t want to leave, but knew I must. I’d been away from Danielle for long enough and knew I ought to be with her. It was unlikely that Danielle could hear me, but I liked to talk to her, reassure her, just in case. Time was suddenly