Julian Barnes, “The Sense of an Ending”

Remembering

I remember, in no particular order:

— a shiny inner wrist;

— steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;

— gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house;

— a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams;

— another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;

— bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.

This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.