Because it was not blood that ran in his veins but water, the man that I met in the launderette had much to say on the subject of various liquids, in an anecdotal sense.

His dreams he said were filled with pipes and strangely shaped tanks, and reservoir lakes clotted with excrement. In summer he would sit as if a redundant water bottle, feeding on the heat of the sparse sun, but never reaching a temperature high enough to bring comfort. His winters were sedentary affairs, interspersed with tubed soup. And with just a misplaced holiday he could commit suicide – ending up just so much stained vapor on an otherwise spotless runway tarmac. His life, it seemed, was akin to a permanent willing drowning.

I noticed his skin had a kind of empty sky blue attached to it. A permanent inner sky. When eventually I got up to leave I wished him well. It began to sheet rain, and I ran. It did not stop for many days.