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I visit Manuel for a round of chess, as I do every Tuesday. The pile of discarded skins in his studio apartment is getting bigger and bigger. I step over a skin that has slipped off the back of the chair. “Aren’t you going to tidy up?” I ask.

“Not just now,” says Manuel, who thinks he’s a reptile, although I’ve never seen him cold-blooded. He collects his discarded skins like other people collect photos. Silent witnesses to his past, only without the same landscape in the background.

“So, when will you be done with the skinning process?” I ask after I’ve fetched two beers from the fridge. We clink glasses.

“Now it’s just getting interesting,” he says. “I think I’m growing wings.”

“Lizards don’t have wings,” I explain to him. “Or are you an insect after all?”

Manuel shakes his head. “A reptile, you know that. I think I’m experiencing an evolutionary leap.” He moves the bishop to D3 and accidentally knocks over my rook with a flight feather.