Chapter 10: Edmund's Route, Retraced

The coat is already on.

This is the first thing Edmund knows when Tuesday arrives — not that he has put it on, not that he retrieved it from any particular hook or chair, simply that it is on, that it has been on, that the wearing of it is a fact preceding his awareness of it the way certain mornings precede the alarm. He is in the hallway. The staircase is behind him. The front door of Ashmore Court is three steps ahead, and the gap beneath it shows the particular quality of Tuesday light, which is different from Wednesday light in ways he has never been able to specify but has always been able to feel.

He is going to be late.