When I was a child, I used to imagine that the past existed somewhere other than in people’s heads. All that happiness and sorrow, those jokes, battles, holidays and people could not simply disappear. Surely, the past lingered in a hidden dimension by its place of origin. The walls of a room were altered, I suspected, by everything that had happened between them. I knew the sensible grown-up response – the present vanished forever into the gaping mouth of the greedy past.
