MATURE. Adults only. Every named and speaking character is an adult with an age on the page: Merrin Oduya 33, Teodor Vane 36, Esther Wingfield 47, Fenella Pilling 58, Devlin Sarr 29, Marianne Oduya 61, Ifeoma Oduya 30, Rufus Pilling 26, and Gareth Llewellyn 52. The youngest is 26. No minor appears in any role, memory, photograph, joke, plan, or future reference. Sexual content is written between Merrin Oduya and Teodor Vane, both adults, and what each of them wants and what stops it is said out loud before anything begins, and either can stop it with one word. The word is teasel. It was said once on the ninth of July at about ten to one in the morning and was not acted on, and it was said again at fourteen minutes past one on the tenth of October and was not acted on, and on the other nine occasions neither of them said it at all. The four written nights are written in full on the page and are specific to these two people. No choice in the book is gated on the intimacy and no ending is unlocked by it. Themes: a wedding celebrated eleven times at a registered building; a return that takes a day out of a person without notice; a noise abatement notice served on a small business; a public register that names two people; a three-day gap in the record of the ninth attempt; a wound under a four-inch scar; a form with nine boxes and one signature; five futures none of which undoes anything. A wound is described from a hospital discharge summary and is never shown, no injury is depicted, no method of anything is described, and no one dies. All music is instrumental; there is no voice acting.