I pulled up outside the house and jumped out to open Kathryn’s door. It stuck a little and I spent a few moments laughing and tugging at the handle.

She stepped out, her high-heeled shoe making a crunching noise on the frosty pavement.

‘You treat me like such a lady, Howard,’ she said, and I thought I heard a little sigh in her voice.

I followed her inside. The house was warm and I was pleased with the way I’d decorated the hall and the living room to match. The lights were just right, big paper globes that softened the glow. Kathryn had chosen them and I’d fixed them up for her. I’d spent two weekends sanding down the woodwork, undercoating and painting three thin coats of white gloss on. Now the doors and the skirting boards shone, and the embossed wallpaper she’d chosen for the hall hung flat and bubbleless, all the patterns matched up at the joins. I’d enjoyed flattening out that paper and wiping it over with the soft brush. Afterwards, Kathryn had stood with her hand on the wall and said, ‘It looks so much warmer.’

‘Let’s just go straight to bed,’ she said now, climbing the stairs.

I sat on our bed, waiting for her to finish in the bathroom. She’d bought a table lamp with a pleated silk shade in Woolworths. It was a dark pink, like the roses we’d decided on for the wallpaper. I didn’t know how to lie on the bed as I waited. Every position seemed too obvious, too lewd. So I sat on the edge and looked at the pink shade. Particles of dust played in the air above the bulb.

Water screamed in the pipes as Kathryn washed. Taking her make-up off. Then the light in the bathroom clicked.

I sat on my hands so they wouldn’t be too cold when I touched her. I would just ask her. I would ask her about her underwear. No, I would tell her I wanted to see it. I wouldn’t make it a question. She would respond to my demand. I was her husband. She would do this for me.

When she came in she already had her nightie on.

‘Where’s your underwear?’

That wasn’t right. That wasn’t right at all.

‘In the laundry basket, you ninny. Where it belongs.’ She walked over to the dressing table and started dragging a brush through her hair. Crackles of static sparked around her head.

I sat staring at the shade.

‘Are you all right, Howard?’

She sat down beside me. Her nightie was pink with a lace trim around the neck and the hem. It had little puff sleeves and a bib of lace at the front.

‘I want to see you in your underwear.’ I looked at the roses on the wall in front of me as I spoke. The heat from the lamp made my cheek hot. That lamp made the whole room pink, I realised. Like a girl’s bedroom. I was sleeping in a girl’s bedroom.