We should do something today, I said. Go somewhere. We should – we should go to the sea.

Jake looked at me again, an exaggerated frown taking over his features.

What? he said again. I . . . I feel awful, Lucy. There’s no way I could drive anywhere.

I’ll drive. I’d had my licence since I was eighteen, but when we’d had the children, Jake became the driver. I needed to be in the back of the car, in the early days, sometimes lifting my breast out of my clothes to feed them as they stayed strapped in their seats. Even as they got older, sitting in the back listening to stories or watching screens, the tradition had continued. I was the one with the snack bag, handing out fruit, opening windows if one child turned green.

But I could do it: I could drive. I had dreamed about the ocean, I remembered now, waking in the night to the empty wrinkled whiteness of the bed, thinking it was foam, the very edge of the world. We needed it, the dream seemed to say: the wordless confirmation of the beach, the vastness of water.

We should go today. It was the kind of decision that we used to make together, when we were younger, when we had more time, more faith in the power of relocation. We would wake up on an empty day and decide to go to Norfolk, or Sussex, or Kent. We would speed away, our hearts running with the road, any morning tiredness ebbing into the sky.

But: Jake was white, could barely stand.

No. God no, he said, his hands at his temples. He looked much older, suddenly, confused.

Maybe tomorrow, then?

I have to go back to bed. He turned, not towards the sofa, but to the stairs, started climbing them slowly, holding onto the handrail. I heard him greet Ted on the landing – All right, mate? – could imagine him ruffling Ted’s fluffy hair as he passed. A small, sleepy voice:

Are you okay, Daddy? Are you poorly?

Hearing this, I could feel that something wanted to collapse inside me. Something wanted to give up, to stop everything. But I didn’t let it. Jake was going up to our bed, I noted. He felt entitled to this, now. He would lie in our bed, and feel his weakness. He would know – as I had known for years, forever – how easy it was for a body to be destroyed.

~

Whatever people might think, I am just like them. I always wanted to be good, to be right, to receive a pat on the head, a touch in the small of my back. Well done.