Days pass into weeks and I don’t know how that happens but it does and still Jenny will not speak to me properly about anything. The summer holidays are coming to an end and you can see the shift in the way the flowers in the garden are starting to lose their lustre. The only things really hanging on are the stubborn geraniums. An anxiety begins to take a hold of me, a list of things in my head to be done. The kids need new school shoes, Maeve could do with another school jumper. I contact Maurice because we have things to discuss as the football season proper will be back upon us before we know it. Maurice is on about organizing tracksuits for the winter, something to protect the lads for when the weather gets really fierce. I agree strongheartedly but I don’t have the inclination to discuss sponsored walks to raise funds with him, I have other things to worry about. There’s the fact that my wife will not speak to me for starters.

We move in and out of each other’s company, Jenny and I, and I feel as though I’m living alone even though I am surrounded by people. It’s an incredibly frustrating way to conduct our lives but that is what we do now. The children are our fodder in this war. They soak up our grievances and yet they never show it. As if sensing our unhappiness they behave impeccably. I miss their antics. I miss the fights, the blame games, the moaning about not having mobile phones and being the only children in their entire school without them. I miss how they stomp upstairs, their tempers flared, the weight of the world against them. I miss them complaining that they have to come in off the green at night, that it’s only ten o’clock and the kids that live across the road are thinking about heading down to the beach for a swim. And I miss telling them that they’re different as they’re French and that French children, much like Spanish children, never seem to know when it’s time to call it a day.

I want to tell Jenny how I very nearly slept with Denise when I went to Cork on the work trip. I want to tell her how I was tempted, sorely tempted, because my wife will not physically touch me. Can she not see what she is doing to me? I cannot be a functioning man and not function. Surely there is something to be said about a wife’s duty, it’s not an expression coined for the fun of it. It has to mean something. Can she not recognize just how easy it would have been for me to do it? One quick fuck. And then back to our life together.