I close my eyes and the rhythm rocks and lulls me back and forth. I weave between flashes of what might be dreams or some long-gone reality until I drift further and further away. When I open my eyes again, the couple are still murmuring but the light has now dimmed to an orange flicker across the ceiling. A warmth begins to rise over me and I realise that somebody has lit a fire.

All I can do is wait this out. At some point soon, the couple will leave. Then I can slip out of the door, along the hall and out again into the air.

This song. It’s that song I think. The one that has something to do with a film we watched once. The one she liked. Her face now comes into my mind but I clench my eyes to shut her out. Not now, I can’t indulge this now. I need my wits about me. I have to be ready to move.

The record has ended and is hissing in its orbit. As soon as they go, I’ll go.

‘Not again,’ he says when, after a pause, the music starts up once more.

‘So grouchy!’ she says and laughs. In my imagination, she is young and blonde and is nestled under his arm.

‘Not again, I said,’ says the man. There’s an undercurrent of something, bristling.

‘Just once more,’ she replies and her laugh tinkles under the bristle.

A beat.

‘It’s like you deliberately ignore me,’ he says. ‘Fuck’s sake.’ Then a scrape as the record is wrenched from the player.

‘Careful! You know how much—’

‘How much what?’ The wine is in evidence in his vowels.

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

There is a sharp snapping sound and a light thud.

‘What did you do?’ she exclaims. Her voice is shrill. Indignant.

‘Accident,’ he says bitterly.

‘You broke it!’ She shifts on the sofa. ‘You broke it. Idiot!’

‘I’m an idiot? It’s a fucking record. Get over it. I’ll get you another one.’

‘Yes, but it wouldn’t be that record,’ she says, her voice dropping at the end.

‘What? You mean it wouldn’t be his?’

She sighs, deflating as if she is tired of this.

‘Oh, just forget it,’ she says, and as she does her voice trails off, as if she’s moved across to the dining area. She seems disembodied without the sound of her feet to tether her voice.

‘No, no, no. Not forget it,’ he says, his voice pursuing her, breathy and urgent.

‘Get off me.’ Her voice is distant. She is deep in the other end of the double room, from the sound of it.