In the end it didn’t matter. He was tired. He didn’t want to talk. He had a tan, a new haircut. Jesus he said, walking past me, walking over to open the windows in the living room. Look at this place. He was whispering, we both were. The children were asleep. Oh, I said, looking around.

We were only playing, I wanted to say to M. Or, really what I wanted to say was that I was having trouble sleeping here, in the apartment. Or, that I was having trouble being in this new place where I couldn’t talk to anyone. That if I were honest, this wasn’t what I’d been expecting. That sometimes my breath caught in my throat. But, in the end I only said, Oh, because I couldn’t really say anything else. Because really, seeing the apartment as M must have seen it then, well maybe it did look a bit terrible.

I’d left up the fort that E had built for her animals in the living room, made out of sheets from the bed that M wanted now, to sleep on. I hadn’t cleaned out the lemons from the day before and maybe there were flies. Really, I should have been prepared, should have been more ready to welcome him home. But I’d made some miscalculation. Wait, I said, cleaning up the fort, pulling the pillows off the kitchen floor without explaining why they were there, but wishing, really wishing that he would ask. I made the bed up while he sat down on the sofa. He seemed to really want to not talk and of course the kids were asleep. So I just got on with it and he started to get up to help me and I said, No, no really, sit down. You’ve been travelling all day, you must be exhausted.

After he went to sleep I wanted to fall into bed with him but I remembered the guest room and I didn’t want him to find it in the morning and think, well, I don’t know what. So I packed all the things I’d collected there into a garbage bag and took it all out to the bins and when the guest room was empty again I felt better about things. Better but also as if I were keeping secrets.

I sorted through M’s laundry, separating the things that I could wash at home from the things that would need to be taken to the dry cleaners. I shook some sand out of the bottom of his pockets and swept all the grains up into a little pile on the floor. I put my finger on it for a moment, on the pile of sand, and pretended like a part of me, a tiny part, was somewhere else, on a beach.

Afterwards, I found I couldn’t quite climb into bed with M, so I tried curling up beside B’s crib on the sofa, but I couldn’t sleep there either. Instead I took the broom and the rags and started to clean the kitchen, spraying and wiping all the surfaces. I cleaned out the drawer where I’d been stuffing the tram tickets. The salt and pepper shakers were shining now on the counter and the chairs were pushed into their places at the little kitchen table. I made it so it was as if no one lived in the apartment.