A surge of emotion temporarily halts the flow, but the sheer volume of memories ensures it soon starts up again. Minutes later she is on to the night my brother came home drunk and climbed up the drainpipe because he thought it would be quieter. It is years since his wife has been so open with him. Has not been tiptoeing around his stress or his grief, and keeping her thoughts to herself. It is like she has flung the doors of herself wide open, and is showing him everything that matters to her. Not long now, he’s sure, until it feels safe to walk right in and reclaim her love for himself.
… that was before his diagnosis, of course…
Two years they lived here, brother and sister. For now she is running through their halcyon days, but the loss that immediately followed is likely to make her in need of a husbandly arm, the comfort of someone who knows her better than she knows herself.
Logan’s plans, however, are derailed by a chain of events leading from his discovery that Shafiques is indeed still open, but no longer offers free delivery.
I’ll collect it myself, he says, and Jules answers, I’ll warm the plates. But when he returns – quicker than either of them expected – she has not warmed the plates. She is upstairs, in the bathroom. He can just make out the muffled notes of a one-sided conversation. He slips off his shoes, his fist still clutching the hot, pungent bag. Each stair moves a little under his weight but he is quiet as a cat stalking a sparrow. When he reaches the bathroom door he puts his ear against it.
No, he can hear her say, come on, it’s only a weekend… You can talk… I can’t believe you’re asking me that… Well, obviously… I know…No, I haven’t forgotten… Listen, I have to go, he’ll be back soon…
He didn’t want to hear. What possessed him to listen? Now unwanted knowledge is burning inside him and dropping down through him like an uncooled reactor core, melting through layer after layer of control until it hits the liquid heart of him, and all he wants to do is explode. His plan was to tiptoe back down the stairs, step into his shoes, and pretend to arrive again, opening and shutting the door with a bang and Halloo. But now he is too full of pain to want to keep it to himself. He stands very still, eyes fixed on the door at exactly the height where hers will be, so that when she opens it, she screeches and jumps back a step.
He can see her calculating what he might have heard; what lies she might try. Don’t bother, he says.
What? she says.
And so begins a monumental row.