He took a deep breath, then another, which he always did when she left the room, and continued scouring the grout between the tiles, excavating flecks of black mould with a toothbrush, and when he was done the tiles were stained with tiny black dots that had sprayed from the grout and he washed and examined the tiles and rewashed and re-examined them and all the tiles sparkled and he left the washroom and walked to her desk and opened and turned on her laptop and found the file with his made-up name on it and read what she’d written about him and he was satisfied she was far adrift from the shores of his real identity and turned off the laptop and said aloud the shrunken number of days he had to remain exiled and right after the final word left his mouth there was a knock on the door like
