Three such crosses. One cross, that has to be Jenny. Another figure behind the dune in the distance – another cross. It is slightly bigger, that must be me. And beside it another smaller one and that cannot make any sense. Three crosses, we are a family of five. It is then that I realize it’s not me at all. I am sure that the bigger one is Jerome and the other one, the smaller one behind him, is his son.

A watery sensation in my stomach and then a cramp. The feeling I get when I go to a place where there is proper sun and I drink coffee because the tea there is shit and no other reason. And I forget that I cannot stomach coffee and the shit that emerges from me with all the coffee and the olive oil is liquid and the aroma in the toilet, the aroma afterwards of me and my bodily functions.

The counting to ten. The counting of my strides as I visualize myself running up the Cat’s Ladder, two hundred and thirty-eight steps.

Wait for us, Daddy. I recall the one time I brought Maeve and Mikey and Joey with me and how they tried to keep up with me but because of my adult addiction to rhythm I found that I was afraid to decelerate in case I wouldn’t be able to finish going up and down with the children, like I’d planned. I have read that extreme exercising is a form of mid-life crisis. I find this interesting. I went on ahead of the children that day and when we finally got home Jenny berated me for pushing them too far. The words she said are still in my mind.

Remember, Des, they’re only children.

They are not only children. They are my fucking children and Jenny is my fucking wife and if I get my hands on that cunt for messing my family around I don’t know what I might do.

The tsunami documentary is opening up a series of questions from the children and I answer their natural disaster queries with a reluctance from the kitchen now with a notch of irritation because I am out here cleaning. Clearing away dishes, scraping the pork fat from the plates and putting it into the bin. There is a stale smell coming from it and I know that Jenny has been up to her tricks. She runs her cigarette butts under water and she wraps them in fragments of kitchen towel. She does this because she doesn’t want me to know how many cigarettes she is smoking when she is working downstairs and I am in bed. It is pathetic. Her smoking and me trying to instigate sex and calling her upstairs and me wanting her to want me.