Saudade
sow-DAH-juh
n.The presence of an absence; longing carried almost with affection.
PortugueseEstablished linguistic term
The Blue Coat
The flat sold in nine days, which everyone said was very good, and which felt to Elena like being told her house had burned down efficiently.
She had three weeks to empty it. She had spent two of them emptying the parts that didn't matter — the kitchen, the bathroom cabinet with its archaeology of half-used things, the drawer of cables belonging to devices neither of them had owned for years. She was down to the wardrobe now, which she had been circling the way you circle cold water.