My hands clasped behind her neck, there was no way she could –

Shit. She rose onto her knees, shook me from side to side. I still –

Fuck. Still had her, though. Oh, fuck …

She convulsed, tossed me from her back, right off the fucking –

‘Ow,’ I said from the floor, my face in one of her shoes. ‘Fuck, Biddy.’

‘You OK?’ She leant over, looked concerned.

‘It’s my neck. Really, Biddy. I’m not joking this time. Can we take a break, just for a second?’

She backed away on the mattress, hands on her mouth. I climbed back onto the bed holding my neck, and –

– lunged at her full force, shoved her onto her back, clambered on top of her, straddled, tried to push her hands into the mattress, above her head, as she’d done with –

She resisted, ha, but there was no way she could –

Jesus. I was in the air, on my back, pinned again.

‘Say yield.’

‘Fair enough.’ I was sweating, panting. ‘I’ll say it, but I just wanted to –’

One last shot. I tried to flip her off, the pelvic battering ram.

Fuck it.

‘OK, yield,’ I said. ‘Yield.’

6

6

I pulled my eyelid from the eyeball, pressed the blunt point of Sarah’s pencil onto it, dragged it along, bit by bit, both hands shaking. Scratchy. Smudgy. Thin wood leafing onto the kohl tip, my stretched tear duct in the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t … What was wrong with it? I pressed harder, tugged the tip back and forth along the wet pink skin. Yeah.

Josh’s voice in the backyard, Biddy’s …

I’d driven Oliver and Sophie to Kyle’s, smelt no alcohol, saw only cordial bottles and his girlfriend Himari’s work clothes, hugged the kids – Bye, kids, your parents are shit.

I drew the pencil tip across my top lids again, all the way to my crow’s feet, stood back and studied myself in the mirror. Yeah, I was hot. Or not. A glam god. A Death in Venice vanity project trying to tart up his decaying visage for a final hoorah in the sun.

I walked lightly to the bedroom, hoping Sarah would notice and have a laugh with me.

‘Oh, hun,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t look good.’

I laughed, felt like crying. ‘You don’t like it?’

Her expression said it all. Since parenthood, we did sleepy eyes, despondent eyes, loneliness eyes – not this.

‘Yeah, nah, sorry.’ She came closer, her eyes on mine, kissed me on the cheek. ‘It doesn’t look good, Chris. It’s maybe the colour.’ She licked a finger, rubbed at my face. I was five again, my mother – miss you, Mum – rubbing sleep from my eyes. The wet tarmac, cold air, the scent of her hand on my face. I was forty, Sarah rubbing eyeliner … ‘Why don’t you go through and clean it off.’