from the beginning of my novel, The Artist and the Mathematician, a literary love story in two parallel narratives and five dimensions.

"Outside is white and sharp. The sun sends a cone of orange light down the centre of the street, through the glass doors of the bar. It continues as a three-dimensional rectangle across the empty scratched copper tables. It warms nothing, on its way. Everything, outside, is taut with cold. Inside, the radiator competes with chill draughts. Where the sun's weak light falls on the opposite wall, it turns the cream paper of a charcoal sketch to orange. The metal table is icy on her wrist where her hand rests momentarily beside her saucer. She would like to change bar, but she is waiting for a friend whose phone is dead, or switched off. She stares at the sketch while the muted pop music rebounds around the silence. Dido is reflecting quietly on the sand in her shoes. She would rather not hear this song. The bar always has art of one kind or another - it varies each month. The life-drawing looks familiar - eventually, surely, they are all the same - the observed curves of naked Woman, with any idiosyncratic flaw, fat or angularity, exaggerated to show that this was a real artist, drawing a real naked woman. This one is good, but still an odd thing to hang in an exhibition. It doesn't fit with the oil paintings around it. She thinks she has seen it before, pinned on a wall in a bare room full of bright yellow hot sunshine, one corner torn. She sips her cold coffee, and thinks about this thought. She looks around at one of the paintings. She sees bright yellow sunlight pouring in a window, lying across the rough brick sill, and onto plain floorboards. The rhomboid of heat fills the room, so it is no longer empty. She looks back at the sketch, and quickly away again. The dying sun has turned it red, now, and the waiter is carrying out a tray of tealights in glass holders. They sparkle in the growing gloom. One of the paintings is wide and low, showing a pair of huge eyes set in pale, flushed skin. The eyes are a strange colour. She looks at her watch and asks for a glass of wine. She should've brought her laptop.

When the wine arrives, she picks it up and walks across the room to the sketch. She stands in front of it, drink in hand, like any thoughtful gallery visitor. She studies the torn corner and stares hard at the exact lines where thigh crosses breast, toe peeps out from beneath buttock.

"These aren't any good, they're only practice. I just stick them up for myself to see how I'm doing."
"I like it. I like the way her stomach folds."
"I'm not good at drawing people, really. I'm trying to learn."

The sketch she thinks she's seeing should be 6000 miles away. She hasn't been sleeping, again, and memory deceives. Her heart hammers as she walks to the next painting, holding her glass with exaggerated care in case she crushes or drops it. She looks at the eyes. It is possible, while unlikely, that these are her eyes. The gleaming green irises reflect the sunrise.

"What is it about sunrises and sunsets?"
"They're unpaintable. Well, I think they are. There's Impression: Sunrise, of course, and plenty of Turner - but even then. The ones that are so incredible they hurt you, you can never paint those ones well. You just end up with cheap tourist sketches. So I can stare at them forever, and never have to paint them. And every moment is different. And I'll never try to pin any of it down."
"And if I asked you for a cheap tourist sketch? I am a tourist."
"Then I guess I'd have to try. Tourism's an important industry, we all have to do our bit." His grin was a tourist attraction of its own.

The eyes are startled, wide, with dilated, pure black pupils.

He was actually crying as he rocked his hips, in and out of her.
"Your face, in the changing light, as you come, is more beautiful than the sunrise itself." Those were his exact words, afterwards. She had hidden her face against his chest, embarrassed. She didn't think people said things like that in real life.

She takes a controlled sip of wine, her hand barely shaking. A tornado is raging through her heart, threatening to rip her open. She would rather not look at the paintings and returns to her table. Today is 18 December. 365 days have passed. She wants to play with the number, factorise it and take it apart for unusual properties, to calm herself, but it's an old friend - 5 and 73. She doesn't even have to think about it. She counts the paintings, instead: thirteen. A prime number, also a Fibonacci number, supposedly unlucky, the number of moons in a year. Primes are good, but not to play with - the quarks of mathematics, except quarks may yet turn out to be divisible.

"I don't like the number four anymore," he said.
"As an artist, you should." She explained map theory to him - that four colours were the most he'd ever need. Whatever the shapes, however many there were, with only four colours, no two shapes of the same colour need touch.
"In the end," he said, "It doesn't make any difference if it's four, or five, or six…"
She protested that every number had its own unique personality.
"Even so, once there's a number on it, that's it. It doesn't matter which one it is, in the end. Four o'clock, twelve o'clock - there's a number which will take you away, and that's the end of it."
Neither enjoyed this conversation. Now it was said, they couldn't help the countdown in their heads. He said he knew how to stretch time, he'd roll them a joint. It was three in the afternoon. The light was heavy and felt second-hand. The city lay under a blanket of yellow pollution.
"What's special about three?" he asked.
She smiled sadly. "Want a list?"
"Yes." His voice was small and sad. He wore his emotions so plainly.
She didn't mention primes, Fermat, Mersenne, circles, natural numbers divisible by three. She kissed him. "It's three o'clock and I'm with you. That's top of the list." She was surprised to find that was the truth. It was thirteen hours before she left.

She looks at the diptych of blue and yellow. Both canvases show the same scene: a line drawing of Cape Town city centre, from far above, the old buildings interspersed with a handful of high-rises like giant dominoes. Each structure is outlined in heavy black. On the one canvas, these are filled in with four shades of ugly, dirty yellow. On the other are four shades of blue like the sky turning slowly through dusk into bluish dark. She studies the paint closely, looking for the hand that had held the brush. It's not signed - none of them are. She is still not absolutely certain. Whatever the statistical likelihood of the same ideas and images, this is not proof. Art is vague. It allows you room to insert yourself, your own ideas and experiences. She may be simply spinning a dream out of suggestions. And after all, is that necessarily Cape Town? Many cities might look similar, at an angle like that. She could, of course, ask the name of the artist.

She compresses her churning feelings until they are as needle-sharp as anger. She walks on, determinedly examining. She sees…"

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