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TUESDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER
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| Dear friend, |
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I am meeting the man from the envelope at eleven, and I have rewritten what I want to say to him more times than is dignified.
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Before that, though, Agnese, whose letter came in yesterday afternoon and has been sitting with me ever since.
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She has the searching dream most weeks, and what she is searching for is her son, who is twenty-seven and living in another country and perfectly well.
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In the dream he is about four, and she has turned round in a supermarket and he is gone, and she goes up and down the aisles until morning.
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Nobody is missing
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You cannot find a person who is not lost, which is why the looking never ends, and it is the reason this dream can run all night without ever getting anywhere.
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Agnese, the age is the part I would hold onto, because your son is not four anywhere except in there, and the dream has gone to some trouble to make him small again.
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A supermarket is an odd stage for it, too, since nothing important ever happens in one, and it is exactly the sort of place where a small child lets go of your hand for a second.
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So the dream is not warning you about him, since he is grown and fine and answering his phone, and it has picked the last version of him that could go missing on an ordinary Tuesday.
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You cannot find a person who is not lost, which is why the looking never ends.
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