I went into the lounge as quietly as I could – Jake was a very light sleeper – the toes of my socks squeaking on the floorboards. I eased his phone from the coffee table where it lay, turned to aeroplane mode. He was so much more sensible than me, would never scroll through social media or emails in the middle of the night. He stirred, turning over, moving his mouth and making nonsense sounds, the room already thick with his sleep, the smell that men make in the night.

I tiptoed away, the phone beginning to sweat in my fist.

~

The harpy is an expert at stealing things.

She has always been dispatched to create disappearance: to make things not exist. Precious objects, people, the food from their plates, bites they were lifting to their mouths.

Like sudden wind, she comes down: she takes it all away.

~

It is the second time. Nearby, another, larger Christmas party is ending. There are fireworks, an amateur display, an uneven rhythm against the garden’s bare branches. The quiet grass, the quiet field: the world is in its deepest sleep, but its people are awake, throwing fire into the sky, trying to light it up.

•

For a few minutes, I sit and watch the coloured flashes: I do nothing. I do not even attempt to enter the code on Jake’s phone. I hold it in my hand, inanimate, like a large pebble, smoothed and worn by years in the ocean.

There is total darkness in the room, and then a flash of cascading light every few minutes, blanching the fridge, my legs, the window ledge with its small pots of herbs. There are cheers, somewhere, and the kind of wild, keening animal cry that teenagers make at a certain time of night.

Every time the light comes, it feels at first like a blessing, a benediction from God or space, and then like a warning, the totalizing light of disaster. Christmas morning, nearly.

I turn the phone over, its steady light so different from the fireworks, friendly, almost. There is a text from Jake’s mother, but I can only partially read it: the phone is still locked. I try a series of numbers: his birthdate, Paddy’s, Ted’s. I try the date of our wedding.

One attempt remaining, the phone informs me, something humane about these words in the darkness, my only company.

09.10.84. My birthday: the phone gives way, all of its functions laid out, available. For a few seconds more I do nothing, weighing the moment, feeling its textures. I am tired; my eyes are heavy. I think of climbing into bed, of being able to sleep, if only for an hour or two. I could turn the phone off now, return it to Jake’s sleeping side.