And now I have difficulty measuring my breath. A breath that normally comes easy for me is laboured and I must stay sitting here for that is what a sitting room is for. I must sit and I must be still and I must be quiet and I mustn’t allow myself to stumble for I am here after all, and this is my plan and it is imperative to go along with a plan once it’s been made. I never backtrack. It’s one thing that I don’t like to do and I think now that it might be why I didn’t fuck Denise in Cork when I had the chance, despite her insistence to the contrary. It wasn’t only about restraint, it was about making the same mistake twice and sometimes there are things that you can only do once.

I go into the kitchen and take another can of beer from the fridge. I pop the ring and I do it softly, slowly so the sound will be weak but measured and I don’t know why I’m worried about the noise yet I must be quiet.

I check on the children.

I check on Jenny.

The children are in a deep sleep and Jenny is motionless apart from her steady breathing. It is soft but hoarser than normal and the Valium is working. I never doubted that it would and yet I did.

I creep silently down the stairs and I am careful on the last two steps even though it’s not like we live in an old house where I have to be mindful of this idiosyncracy. Ours is modern but I go through the motions nonetheless. The Week in Politics is winding down and I feel like I’ve learnt nothing but that is not something I feel bad about.

The children’s school bags are in the corner of the sitting room, not where they should be. They should, rightfully, be underneath the stairs, alongside the coats. Jenny organized their new school books earlier on and she mentioned something about them not being covered and that she was quite certain she had requested that when she was ordering them from the bookshop. She had ordered them in June just before the old school term finished up and that uncertainty about the weather had set in when everyone wondered if the sunshine that we had enjoyed during the June bank holiday weekend had marked the beginning of the Irish summer and the end. The summer hadn’t in fact panned out too badly and I was glad for the children. I am glad now.