Years later, Tony would discover that writers never felt they belonged anywhere. That was one of the reasons they became writers.

Dennis hopped into the nearest available rabbit hole, which led down into a whole labyrinth of interconnected tunnels. These all brought him to rooms full of pain and humiliation: letters tucked inside books, chilly bedtimes, lies, tears and (towards the end) a long poem about loss that Edith had read out to him, naked, with no explanation for the poem or the nudity, while she wept. Time passed and all he did was smile at Barry blankly. This sort of thing had been happening to him since Edith had gone. Entire minutes could go by, in shops and pubs and work meetings, in which he seemed to lose track of himself. When he came back again, he frequently found that people had given up on him. Conversations had moved on, shopkeepers were serving somebody else. He was, he supposed, glad that his marriage was finally over, but he hadn’t managed to prepare himself for the shock of it, the sheer exhaustion.