You’d forgotten to bring one in for her this time; in fact you’d forgotten that you used to do it at all, but surely that’s no crime. You’ve had other things on your mind - the worrying dip in profits at the second restaurant in the summer, the competition of the new Italian, and the latest hire who hasn’t been pulling his weight. Sitting alone in the kitchen with your muddy boots, your empty wine glass still on the table, your muddy footprints jigging cheerfully on the tiled floor, you can smell the scent of rosemary on your fingers yourself. Didn’t someone say that rosemary was for remembrance?

And why does she clunk everything about so much when wiping up the mud, and why do you clunk everything about so when you are cleaning yourself up? And why do you take your drink to one room to listen to music, whilst she goes to the other to watch the TV? When did talking become so difficult, so alien? You’ve been together for ten, fifteen, twenty years. You’ve had children who have grown up in a loving home. Everyone says you’re so lucky, everyone thinks you’re the perfect couple - The Couple That Are In Love. You don’t know when you started losing love. You can’t explain when the window of your heart opened up to show that you were falling apart, day by day, hour by hour, minute by thudding minute, just waiting for the relief of the night, when you can escape into your happy dreams and wind yourselves around each other like you used to do, and at least be at peace in your sleep. You wish you knew when you started failing at the one thing that was the shining success of your life.

You don’t believe it, and so you ignore it and hope that the disappointment and dread that comes with every waking morning will go away. And yet every waking morning it remains - you know it when your sleeping embrace loosens, and your legs and arms unwind and stiffen, and the curves and hollows that fit each other so well move callously apart to the cold, uninhabited far reaches of the bed. Let it leave, let the disappointment and dread leave - haven’t we suffered enough? Isn’t the losing of love bad enough, without watching the sorry corpse of it decay in our lives, in our lips? Let our unhappiness expiate our bad temper, our shortcomings, our failures and failings, and let us love again.