I lie very still. I'm not thinking of anything in particular, just trying to exist, to live with the ever-expanding core of numbness and the frantic periphery of excitement. In the world I inhabit now - the world I've been inhabiting for more than a week - I feel, powerfully, the certainty of my parents' death. They will die, be dead, be finished, the stream of their love cut off. And I will still be here. The world and all its rubbish of television and chemicals will still be here. This certainty of my parents' death has done something to my skin, taken off a dull layer, left me in sensual nudity.