Chapter 4: Edmund Is Almost Certainly Not Late

The coat is already on.

This is how it always begins — not with the decision to put it on, not with the lifting of the wool from the hook by the door (there is no hook by the door; there has not been a hook by the door since at least the mid-nineties, though Edmund has not registered this as relevant information), but with the simple established fact of the coat, already present, already belted, as though he and the morning came into existence simultaneously and fully dressed. The left pocket has a crease in it that he does not remember putting there. The crease is old. He does not investigate this.

Tuesday, then. He is certain of this.