Although this is revealed slowly – it is too painful to address at once – and though the narrator has felt jealousy “whittle [her] down to something dishonourable”, the greater loss turns out to be that of the volatile, unearthly friend, not the husband. Nicholas is still there, occasionally – he comes for dinner and stays over, both their lives dulled by disuse. But Butterfly, as she is known, haunts through her disappearance. When they were girls, she and the narrator used to play a game called “Chair”: in a pitch dark room, one would have to close her eyes and guess whether or not the other had sat down. How could they have lost each other now? The narrator’s relationship with Butterfly is a freighted game of poker, a negotiation with a ghost.