The tub itself had seen better days. An important feature of the house when Zeno purchased it, the bath was deep enough to cover his shoulders when he sat at the wide end. Zen admired her dad’s shoulders. Lately, she had started taking note of the boys at PE lessons, on the lookout for a similar pair.

“Who’s this Miss Davidson you don’t like?” asked Zeno, pointing to one of his daughter’s mist-drawings.

“She’s horrible and she hates me.”

“Does she? Are you sure?”

“Well, she always picks on me.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I dunno.”

“Maybe she picks on you because you don’t like her.”

“Oh, don’t be soft, Dad.”

“It could be true. I bet she doesn’t get up the noses of the other kids who don’t mind her. It’s your resistance to her that she pushes like a button. If you could lose the button she wouldn’t have anything to push. Now wouldn’t that be a smarter way of dealing with her?”

Zen considered a moment. “It would, if I could do it.”

“Of course you can do it. Just look at her eyes the way you do the sad animals you like so much, and then you could touch her.

“Touch her?”

“Sure, she doesn’t even have to know. Bump her, or touch when she isn’t looking.”

“Would that work?” Zen asked, unconvinced.

“I think so. It doesn’t hurt to try.”

“Okay.” Zen changed the subject. “What’s this present you promised to give me when I was nine?” Zen enquired, newly nine and with presents still on her mind.

“Are you sure you’re grown up enough?”

“I’m nine. Time’s passing. I’ll be in double figures soon.” She swept up her hair and regarded herself in the distressed mirror on the wall adjacent to the window. Zeno wondered at the constant preoccupation women had for the passing of time. He had never really thought about it until his eyes started to back up on him.

“It’s in two parts you see, this present,” his delivery slowing as thought added weight to it.

“Oh, come on then, Dad,” said Zen, who could smell procrastination a mile off.

“The first part,” began Zeno, not allowing his daughter’s impatience to influence him, “is that from now on you can have the bath to yourself on Fridays.”

“Okay, that’s the bad part. Now what’s the other?” She stuck out a lower lip, which Zeno knew from previous jarring was often accompanied by a gnashing of teeth.

“The exciting part is that now you’re nine, we are going to teach you how to breathe.”

“I already know how to breathe,” said Zen, snapping her jaws and rubbing her clenched teeth from side to side with that unnerving grating sound. “And who is ‘we’?”