She called a cab and packed a bag, the two women embraced quickly at the door. They said affectionate things, but under the surface of their parting Christine was aware of haste, as if each of them suddenly, urgently, needed to be free of the other’s company. When Lydia had gone she felt full of energy, throwing the windows up high, looking out onto the wide sleepy street, the semi-detached brick villas with their white-painted fretwork porches, some smartened up and some with flaking paintwork and torn curtains, steeped in the yellow light of the summer evening. The plane trees cast their blue shadows; parakeets sliced across the stillness, shrieking with derision. She stacked glasses and plates in the dishwasher, and dusted and vacuumed the front room, changed the sheets on their bed upstairs, put clean towels and fresh scented soap in the bathroom. It would be late by the time Alex got home, he wouldn’t want a heavy meal. So she went out to the Co-op to buy eggs and peppers for a frittata, which would be just as nice cold; when that was cooked, and sprinkled with sea salt and lemon on a plate in the kitchen, she showered and washed her hair, changed into her navy dress, sprayed on perfume, poured herself a glass of wine, then sat down with her book under a single lamp switched on in the front room, to wait.

Her perception was a skin stretched taut, prickling with response to each change in the light outside as it ran through the drama of its sunset performance at the end of the street, in a mass of gilded pink cloud. When eventually the copper beech was only a silhouette cut out against the blue of the last light, Christine pulled down the blinds, put on all the lamps, turned her awareness inwards. From half past ten she began to think she heard Alex’s car draw up outside: each time, she braced herself. The more a homecoming was anticipated, the more disconcerting the actuality was prone to be, she knew that: the arriving one walked into a shape prepared for him, not actually his own. Just because she was relieved to be free of Lydia and looking forward to seeing Alex, the reality of him would be an affront: he wouldn’t fit into her preparations or even notice them, would arrive burdened with purposes of his own, breaking into the tension of her waiting. Men didn’t care anyway about clean sheets or scented soap. It would be better, really, if she watched telly and forgot she was waiting.