Her friend, the painter Jake, has recently finished a portrait of her, complete with the spaces she cannot feel in her bedroom, which she calls The Damned Room.

She will often sit in The Damned Room pressing flowers in a German encyclopedia whose pages have been soaked in bull's blood one by one and carefully re-bound.

Once the volume is complete she intends to send it to a noted French psychoanalyst, who she believes will then contact her and propose an alchemical marriage.

Only then, she believes, will she know why her head blazes night and day.

The painter Jake knows of the impossibility of both his own task and hers. He dares not disturb the sweet violin of her mind through respect and love for the burning lady.

He believes she is a saint of an as-yet-unfounded religion. Jake loves her very deeply and for this he is doomed.

***

One day Sian secretly discovered her new boots stuffed with the freshly severed heads of pigeons. A note was left on the table of The Damned Room. It read "the doves demand more white." She has heard nothing more from the author, or authors, of the note.

***

After suddenly running short of dried cat's liver Sian was obliged to substitute candle wax in one of her more elaborate creations.

Unfortunately, she found herself engulfed by a foul odour and spent the next few hours sitting on the uncarpeted stairs waiting for it to dissipate.

Sian's loneliness was only broken by infrequent, brief conversations with Mr Peter, who was visiting from her imagination at the time.

It was during her sojourn on the stairs that Sian claims she badly burned her hands while trying to scratch her head.

***

Jake still refuses to tell the whole story of the time Sian tried to lick the inside of her head, particularly the backs of her eyes, insisting she wanted to taste her thoughts and some of the colours she saw. As Jake tells it (what little he does tell) she claims to have tasted red and green in the past and wanted to do so again.

***

Sian speaks harshly to Jake, who has upset her by refusing to paint today.

"You have cancer of your life. You are worthless and diseased. You're fake, you're sham!"

Jake continues cleaning his brushes.

***

"In this house by the sea, my blood has grown sluggish and old. I know I shall never leave now," said Sian, knowing that the nearest coast was at least 40 miles away. Jake looked sad.

***

In the soft, torn hours of the morning, Sian, imagining she had a small daughter to whom she was telling a story, began to write. "Life is a beautiful, beautiful lady who has an equally beautiful sister called Death ..." she began.

***

Sad Sian thinks of the woman. "I'll only be gone 10 minutes," she'd said. Sian sat on the carpet with the soft, dead puppy for hours. She knew her mother wasn't coming back even though she'd tried to tell her about the little dog.

***

Looking out of her window now Sian sees the crack-backed, funny caretaker trying to chase rainy birds away from the roof with a short broom. She smiles.

Colours burn softly in her open hands. She can still smell the puppy as the cold crept stiffly into him.

***

"I dreamed I saw spittle on the Mona Lisa," said Jake one day after an unsatisfactory lunch. "Mmmm," was all Sian could think to say in reply.

***

The polished balcony of bone is bare when Sian steps out onto it.

Leaning over the edge she gazes down at the old house and along the shattered paving slabs to the deserted street corner. This is where he used to spend so much time, dreaming of me and masturbating, she thinks.

She curses Jake for taking away her meaninglessness. The sin of life was unforgivable. The light from the flames licking Sian's head grows brighter.

***

Jake stood in the old store for days, clockless, talking. His knowledge was very extensive but he avoided the violent spike of precision.

The store owner finally became angry at Jake's refusal to leave and called the police. When they arrived they became so fascinated by Jake's narration they forgot to arrest him. He is still there today.

***

Folding and unfolding, Sian's memories spit on their own meaning.

***

Her visitor spoke in taut, ungenerous French. "We need to create the pedestrian power principle," he said.

Sian sat on the old chaise lounge, her face by turns blank and puzzled.

"Tame the tarmac! There are too many cars. Reclaim the roads!" he enthused.

***

"I haven't spoken to my brother for eight years. Not since my father's funeral, in fact," Jake once told Sian.

"I've not spoken to mine for much longer than that. But I suppose it's easier for me because he doesn't exist," she'd replied.

***

Sian was woken one night at midnight by a field full of hammering children. The din of toy hammers on imaginary anvils was unimaginable.

***

Sian's Japanese friend Akiko came to visit in the heat of July. The girl's small, sad oriental face made Sian strangely happy.

Akiko had long, black hair that flowed and shone like a dark river falling from the top of her head.

"If I had hair like that," thought Sian, " My head would not be aflame!"

***

A small gold mask, large enough only to fit a cat's face, lay on Sian's table.

Akiko smiled. "It's yours," she said.

Sian picked up the mask carefully, afraid it might be too fragile to hold.

"What's it for?" she asked after turning it over delicately in her fingers for a few moments.

"For you to wear - so you will have golden thoughts," Akiko told her.

But it's too small, thought Sian, wishing Jake was there to tell her what she should do.

***

When the slow clockwork of their lives together finally ran down in the middle of the night there were no cries, no sighs, no tears. Sian simply forgot who she was.

The flames had died.