The little blue-and-white jasper clock in the niche at the bottom of the stairs. Only ten o’clock! How epic the nights had become! And how she longed for someone to lay a hand on her brow, someone who would say, ‘All shall be well, all shall be well...’ Even poor Stephen would be welcome now, the youthful Stephen, the way he was at teacher training college in Bristol when they first met, puffing away at that silly pipe, cracking jokes, talking politics, twang of Manchester in his voice, Stalybridge. Of course, he was drinking even then, but they all did, it was part of being young, everyone talking too much and smoking their heads off. It was never a problem until Alec was born. Then, instead of getting merry on Friday and Saturday nights, he would stop off at the pub on his way home from the school and go on with it sitting in front of the television or down in the workroom. Brooding, drinking, dreaming up new enemies for himself, building his own elaborate hell. People said it got worse after he missed promotion to head of department at King Alfred’s. Others said it was because he wanted to be in higher education, not in a secondary school, that he didn’t really like children, but it wasn’t that. Something had gone wrong with Stephen before she had ever met him. God knows what. Talking personally he called ‘psychobabble’, and she got tired of looking in the end. Probably he didn’t know himself, because it wasn’t always neat. You can’t always give it a name. Like the cancer. What was the root of it? Stress? Cigarettes? Bad luck? Some secret weakness. A hairline fracture that one day brings the house down. None of us, she thought, none of us survives our imperfections.