He took hold of my face, his fingers indenting the soft flesh of my cheek in four places on one side, the thumb on the other cheek pressing against my jawbone. Instinctively, I tried to rear back out of his grasp but he held me fast and brought his own face close to mine. His expression was blank but all the same, I looked away, down and away, so his face was blurred.

When he spoke, his voice was very calm. ‘I’ve been stitching a child’s face this morning. She’s going to have a permanent scar, just here.’ He gave my face a small shove. ‘She was six years old. She fell off a bunk bed onto a radiator. And you want to moan about how hard it is having a roast lunch cooked for you by your parents. What is it, what was so awful? Potatoes not done the way you like?’

He gave my face another tiny shove, released it, rose from the sofa.

‘Matty …’ I said. My tone was both bewildered and conciliatory. ‘I didn’t mean.’

He looked down at me. I shrank back against the cushions. He made a small noise between his teeth, a kind of ‘t’ sound, a scornful noise, then said, ‘I didn’t mean. Just listen to yourself. I, I, I. It’s all about you, isn’t it?’ Then he went into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

I sat where I was for a moment, trying to work out what had just happened. Then I rose and went into the kitchenette and put the kettle on. I warmed his mug first, just how he liked it. I breathed. I thought about the long bath I had taken that morning, before I went to my parents’ house, while Matty was probably running down a corridor at the hospital.

It was odd, being in my own kitchen and yet detached, moving around at the routine task of making tea: watching myself thinking one thing, feeling another.

*

Matty didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day, that Sunday, not even when I took a cup of tea into the bedroom and placed it silently on the bedside table next to him. I went back out into the sitting room and tidied up the flat while he stayed in the bedroom. I emptied a couple of cupboards, cooked an evening meal – spaghetti Bolognese, even though I was still full of roast lunch and would have been happy with a piece of toast. I mustn’t be selfish, I thought. I’ve eaten properly today but Matty hasn’t. He ate it in silence.