It has been eighteen hours. He has left his wife for good. Time is behind them and before them. They are sat on the hands of time, going around and around in opposite directions. The astronomical dial on his favourite clock was built in 1410. The sun passes over Arabic numbers to indicate Babylonian time. The moon hand tells lunar time. Star hand indicates sidereal days, shorter than regular ones by nearly four minutes. He proposed to his wife in front of that clock. When she dies, he will go there and get drunk to celebrate. He will see her six feet under one day. Ivor will recommend another three feet minimum, possibly another nine – if he can bribe the gravediggers. Just in case. It’s best not to take any chances with his wife. Pure bile in the woman’s veins – but she’d swear on their kids’ lives it’s fucking honey. She did three sessions of therapy and now insists she’s enlightened. All she has really learnt is a few key terms to bolster her own deluded sense of victimhood. Ivor’s wife believes – she is the most caring person on the planet.

He can say whatever he wants.

She doesn’t hear it.

Joanne has systematically taken him apart for so fucking long – so why is he missing her, like some idiotic puppy who has run away from the fur traders but is pining to go back and get petted for a few minutes before it is totally skinned? That’s what she’d do in the end. That’s what people like her have in them. They can’t help themselves.

He can hear it…

Tap, tap, tap, in the walls.

The roof has rotten beams.

He sticks a finger into the wood and it falls away. The building is sick.

– Terminally ill, doctor – it’s not going to make it!

He’s seen this kind of thing before when he was working with his uncle on house renovations at the weekends, but this is far worse than anything he saw on those jobs.

Tap, tap, tap.

In the beam above Ivor’s head – one tiny deathwatch beetle head-butts the wood.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

He knows what it is now!

It’s a mating call.

To lure a fuck from the darkness.