“Dog’s hurt,” he says, wiping his mouth with his arm.

“Ash fell on him just now. He’ll recover.” She draws near, touching his hand; the skin is wet. “Do you remember it was hot like this, the day he was born?” Labor had been long and sweaty; Eric had been by her side throughout, attentive and tender, overwhelmed when his son arrived. She smiles. “It’s hard to believe that little baby is already three!”

“He’s not a baby anymore.” He walks to the door, turns back, grins briefly. “He said ‘Dad’ by the way.” He disappears and she stares after him, stunned. Ash’s first word.

Through the window, Ash is now sitting on a pile of bark chips trickling them through his fingers. He must have escaped from the kitchen unnoticed. She hurries out the door after Eric and bends down to Ash in the new playground. “What did the birthday boy say?”

He picks up a handful of bark chips and shows them to her.

“What’s Daddy called, poppet?”

Ash rolls on his back, squeezing his eyes shut against the sun.

Sorrel slips off the swing and squats near. “I heard him say ‘Dad,’” she whispers.

Eve puts an arm around Sorrel and they watch Ash as he rolls from side to side. “Lucky girl,” she whispers back. “Wish I’d heard too.”

“The house is s’posed to be a surprise.” Poppy’s angry voice comes from the top of the slide. “You’re s’posed to be keeping him inside.”

Eve carries her squirming son back to the kitchen. She puts champagne in the fridge and watches Eric’s tall figure through the window, trundling pieces of wood away for the bonfire, too busy to celebrate this special moment together. She bastes the salmon, watching the dark soy and honey slide over the pink flesh. She knew what he was like when they married; has he changed or has she? She didn’t mind the silences at the beginning, she was busy with babies. It hadn’t mattered then but now it does. She puts the salmon back in the fridge and takes out the steak to marinate in oil and garlic. He’s a wonderful father and a loyal husband, but if she never said another word, he might not either. She rubs garlic into the meat, imagining the silences stretching for hours, days, weeks. She has a brief vision of their lives going forward into the future, spent side by side in wordless quiet, like life in a monastery. When she tells Martin that Ash has said his first word he’ll laugh and clap his hands. They’ll talk; the chat might open into a discussion about language and books, the novel he’s reading or the chapter he’s writing. It could be something else like the view from his balcony or the people in the streets. Anything. Small talk, Eric would say, but it’s talk that expands, the conversations swirl outward. Eric’s statements are like the shutters that close over shop fronts in the evening, metal ones that clang. Dog’s hurt; he’s not a baby anymore.