But here she was, almost thirty years later, and her mother had been right after all. It did matter, the way he saw you when he first came in the door. If you were fresh and smiling or if you were complaining, moaning that he hadn’t taken the bins out or fixed the leaking tap in the downstairs bathroom. Sometimes she would arrange herself to make it look like she hadn’t tried at all. Draping herself in a chair, hair brushed out in a shining curtain, a book in her hands, a glass of wine beside her. The book would not have been read, the wine would not have been her first. But he didn’t know that. Appearance was everything – she’d learned that over the years, if nothing else.

Where are you? Where are you?

Now she sat, too nervous to maintain her tableau, watching the clock tick on. Nine o’clock. He was never normally so late. Maybe he’d gone for a drink with someone from work. They drank so much, the doctors; hardly surprising, the stress they were under. She made it a point never to nag, even when the dinner she’d cooked was dried up in the oven. She’d just smile and apologise, offer to make an omelette or call for a takeaway.

Why hadn’t he messaged? She held her phone tight in her hands, leaving sweaty smears on the screen. Nothing. What a difference it would make, to see the little message window turn black, or the dots that meant he was typing. To know he was safe, and coming back to her. She’d already been on all the news websites, searching for words like accident, crash, taken to hospital. She would be ashamed if he knew how often she did this, how easily panic set in. He worked at the hospital, for goodness’ sake, they’d have called her right away if anything had happened.

Her knuckles had gone white. Carefully, she set the phone down, then sprang up to see if anything needed doing. She straightened the cushion she’d been sitting against, the exact duck-egg shade as the vase on the sideboard. Flicked some specks of dust from the windowsill. Not that any dirt was allowed to settle. Some nights when she couldn’t sleep, she could almost hear the dust falling, the spiders spinning their webs, the grease building up in the kitchen. She would get up, pull on rubber gloves in the dark.

She went into the kitchen and turned the heat down on the chicken casserole she had cooking – she usually tried to make things that wouldn’t spoil if he was late. Rinsed the sink out for the fourth time. Arranged the tea towels. It was dangerous, being alone like this. Too much silence for thoughts to creep into. Flames, licking up a brick wall. A face at a window.