She cracks the eggs and toasts the bread while he pours juice for the kids. They are well oiled in this procedure now; every Friday morning is the same: bad-breathed, sweaty-skinned, musty-covered morning sex interrupted by hyperactive, energised children, followed by scrambled eggs on toast with juice and the background noise of some high-pitched children’s television presenter.

They do it without thinking.

Two cogs rotating, gliding past each other to create the same end result.

Unfortunately, this is the only way they seem to be able to tesselate any more.

Habit and reverie has killed them. Not the rope.

Their sons remain content and oblivious as they wolf down their usual end-of-week breakfast. Tomorrow, their grandmother will use this same time of day to explain what has happened. She will call it an accident but say that they are not coming back. They won’t be home. She will lie and tell those poor boys that their parents are in heaven, that they will be looking down, watching over them. The boys will accept this explanation at first, but they’ll grow and they’ll wonder why their parents could not do in life what their grandmother claims they do in death.

He flicks the kettle on and smiles at her but she doesn’t reciprocate.

It seems futile to chastise the boys for jumping down from the table the moment the last forkful of egg passes their lips, but they do. They are still their parents. And they make them return to their seats, sit down and ask politely to be excused.

Keeping it normal.

Like any other day.

‘Can I be excused, please?’ they drone in sulky stereo, elongating each word in monotone.

The so-called parents let them go. Immediately, the future orphans rush into the lounge, turn up the television before up-turning boxes of cars and bricks and jigsaw pieces. The lovers look at each other. This time with the same expression.

Who are they to decide how their children should act?

Who are they to decide what is right and what is wrong?

Why can they not just love them enough?

The boys shriek with joy, there’s garbled excitement, it’s innocent play. But it doesn’t flick a switch within their parents to bring them back to the reality of their world, and what they are planning to do; what they have been chosen to perform.

There’s a twisted combination of phobia and wrath and abhorrence and it’s beating out any kind of bravery or pleasure or adoration. And maybe that’s the reason they ended up joining The People of Choice.

She doesn’t love him anymore. And he hasn’t loved her for even longer.

She may have grown to hate him. She certainly hates herself.