It’s late September. The window’s open in the sitting room and there’s that particular West Sussex evening air coming in — cold enough to need a jumper, still carrying something of a summer I barely remember having. A few months ago I was on a cliff path in Cornwall with wind in my hair and Sasha telling me I was circling. Now the plane tree outside is turning and the light goes at six and I’m forty, which I mention not for sympathy but because it’s sitting in the corner of t