Any one of the three of us would have been very happy with Twelve. Julia saw it as a burden - another thing to manage when she only wanted to write and swim and watch her rich children be educated and become accomplished. I suggested that I rent it. That worried her. Elaine’s eldest rubbed her thumb up into the shaved hair on the back of my neck and down to the newly exposed skin below my hairline. For how much longer would she be tactile in her affection for me? A child. “We’ll still go in reading week though? The two of us. And not talk.”