Sometimes Adrian would get up as well, sit in his dressing gown at the table gazing blankly at the crossword, and then Irene would ask him, with furious politeness, if he would mop up the pool of yoghurt, put the dishes in the machine, maybe make her a cup of tea, sign the permission slip that would allow Clem to do after-school football, pick up that bloody pen that was rolling around on the floor waiting to be an accident, do something, anything at all, stop eating toast and drinking coffee when he could see that she was going mad with all the things that had to be done in the next ten minutes and couldn’t he see … It was better if he stayed in bed, away from her glaring eyes and warrior’s stance.

That early spring, he didn’t get in till very late, anyway – he was rehearsing for a play that would be shown in a few weeks’ time, in the upstairs room of a pub. The author was a friend and the director a colleague though most of the actors were drama school students. He said he was doing it as a favour, although they both knew he was doing it in order to keep a toe in the acting world. Irene would often be asleep when he came in. She would wake to the door shutting, food cupboards opening and slamming fast again, music playing. She would wait for him to come upstairs, the dip of the mattress, the tug of the duvet, cold skin but then the gradual heat of another body. Beer, smoke, perfume on his skin. She smelt them, although only later did she realize she’d smelt them.

One night, as he lay sleeping, she cleaned out the fridge, squatting in front of it in her dressing gown and slippers, pulling out packets of yoghurts, lettuces that had frozen to the back, browning spring onions, half a pack of feta cheese that had seen better days. The following night, on a binge even she recognized as obsessive, she defrosted the small freezer above it, hacking away slabs of ice with a sturdy knife, chipping at errant peas that were frozen to the sides, mopping up the water with kitchen roll. She sat up at three in the morning and wrote out cheques – for her credit card, for the electricity and gas, for the man who’d come round and unblocked the drains, for the man who’d replaced those tiles on the roof. Her eyes were like pebbles in her head.