Afterword
I had the builders in at home when I wrote this story, and was evicted from my study to a makeshift base in the dining room as the usual banging, drilling, dust and distorted pop tunes from a battered radio filled the house. Still, this turned out to be one of my easiest stories to write. I remember mulling over the idea of something set in a mythic version on an enclosed world around a sun that I had mentioned in another story (“Breathmoss”, which features in Nowhere, Volume I of this collection) then finding that the rest of it fell into place without all the usual revision and back-tracking. Even the name Isabel, which I’d long rather liked and planned on using, seemed to fit perfectly. If I could sit down every day of my life and write something close to this—which I know I can’t, with or without the presence of builders—it’s exactly what I’d do.