As she put the key in the door, she glanced at the bare dahlia plants, their severed heads now brown and rotting into the earth underneath. She had a momentary wobble, then dismissed it again.

Beheaded dahlias and some smashed china didn’t have anything to do with what had gone on before. She was sure of it.

3

Graeme

‘How’s your week been? I brought you some Marlboros…’

Silence. As Graeme slides the cigarettes towards her, he looks nervously across the table at his beloved, whose arms are folded and brows knitted. The black circles beneath her eyes are spreading, the puffy darkness like dual bruises. Catherine ignores the gift.

‘Have I done something to upset you … angel?’

The ‘angel’ is rushed out on fast, feathery breaths, fearing it will be swatted away. A nerve ticks in Catherine’s doughy cheek, pulsing irritation.

‘You look sad,’ says Graeme, trying again, when what he really wants to say is, How can you be sad when we’re together? You are the love of my life, the apple of my eye, the yin to my yang.

He has no idea what yins or yangs actually are. Something to do with seesaws perhaps?

The expression on Catherine’s face is not so much sadness – it’s more bitterness, but all the same, Graeme supposes, it must be hard for his love, watching him walking in and out each week when Catherine herself isn’t allowed to walk anywhere outside of the perimeter fences. Yet. Surely the fact that he visits religiously counts for something? Maybe Catherine doesn’t love him. Maybe these decades of devotion are all a waste of time; maybe their plans and dreams will never come to fruition.

But … they’re getting closer. Catherine’s been good as gold for years – not a foot wrong. And she knows that Graeme would do anything for her.

Anything.

So why can’t she be a bit nicer to him?

Just when Graeme is starting to feel the prickly heat of rejection and paranoia, Catherine raises her head, the effort visible. She reaches across the table and takes his calloused hand.

‘Tell me about our house.’ Finally, she gazes into Graeme’s eyes, and he feels relief flood through him.

He smiles. ‘It’s going to be a cottage, with so much whitewash on the walls that when the sun comes out, it blinds you. We’ll have yellow roses growing up the front walls on either side of the porch – it’ll have one of them little pointy porches with its own roof. We won’t have thatch though – the roofs will be all tiles. I looked into it. You have to renew thatch about every ten years and it costs thousands. Fifteen thou at least, and then you have to get extra insurance and that.’