At five o’clock I start dinner but it takes me a while to figure out what to make because my mind is whirring too much to concentrate on the ingredients and without an oven or a stove top, I’m limited in what I can rustle up. I worry about all the food in the fridge going off but there’s nothing I can do about it, and in the end I pull out the ham and make a salad, doing a calculation in my head as I rinse the lettuce. If we’re here for three more days and we don’t manage to get the electricity working, then we’re going to have to ration what edible food there is. We only have a loaf of bread, some cheese and ham and salad. There’s a jar of pasta sauce and a tin of beans we could eat cold, though I’ll save those until we’re really hungry. There are also some corn flakes. The milk and the butter shouldn’t spoil, given it’s not exactly warm inside the cottage. The kitchen is starting to feel like a refrigerator itself.

In the fruit bowl there’s a handful of apples, some bananas and grapes, and in the cupboard some trail mix and the rest of the shortbread, though Liam’s eaten half already. We could cook the sausages over the fire if push came to shove, I suppose. All in all, though, it isn’t much for two of us for three days given how much Liam eats – but at least I don’t eat a lot, so we should be able to manage.

I make the salad and slice the bread thin, knowing we may need to make it stretch for three more days, then I lay it all out on the table. I decide not to mention the food rationing situation for now because Liam’s already in a bad mood and I don’t want to make things worse. We eat again in silence, the atmosphere in the house almost as bad as the weather outside.

Liam drinks several glasses of red wine, and I watch him warily. Normally he’s quite controlled and only drinks a glass or two at most; it’s another sign that the anxiety is getting to him. He hates not having the upper hand; he’s used to being the shot caller, the one in charge.

I make a ham sandwich and eat it.

‘Your appetite’s coming back,’ Liam comments, swallowing the last of his own sandwich.

I look down at my plate, realising with a start that that’s the first meal in months that I’ve actually eaten all of. I shake my head in surprise. ‘Must be all the adrenaline,’ I say, trying to make a joke of it.

I get up and clear the plates.