There is a Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, who chose not to have a self. Instead, he created over seventy other selves. He called them heteronyms, and invented a biography for each one. One was a doctor, one was a barefoot shepherd, one was a naval engineer, and yet another was a bookkeeper working in an office in Lisbon. These four were writers, but each wrote in a completely different style. Not until fifty years after his death was it discovered that all these works were written by one man. Pessoa said,’To create, I have destroyed myself… I’m the empty stage where various actors act out various plays. I am a secret orchestra, whose instruments strum and bang inside me. I know myself only as the symphony.’

The girl grows up turning from one thing to another and sometimes the world can seem false. She avoids reality to create something else, but isn’t that also reality? What she avoids and what she seeks out, what she acknowledges and what she ignores, what she does and what she chooses not to do, all are real. She sits on fences, holding off, postponing, because there is more yet to know before deciding anything. She sits on fences, and does not come down on any side into what they call reality, or if she does she feels bewildered, missing what she knows is on the other side of the fence. The grass is greener there – until of course she is able to slip through the little gate, only to find that there is no grass, or if there is, it is the same colour as the first patch.. There are always little gates and doorways and alley and tunnels. She gets about. She gets away. She escapes, and then escapes from there. She is on the run.

Now she is wondering where to go next. She will begin where she is and follow her nose. Her nose thinks this is unfair. ‘I am always out in front. I take all the risks and get the blame if I take the wrong direction.’ It sniffs the air dubiously. ‘Is that a sea breeze? Are we standing on the edge of a cliff?’ Hearing this, her feet step back smartly. ‘Nous n’y allons pas!’ they say, which is French for ‘We won’t take a step’. Looking round, her eyes see that she is standing by a cool, bright river. ‘All is well,’ they say. ‘Just go with the flow.’