‘I remember.’

‘The only place you could get him to settle was here, between us.’

‘You were worried because all the books said it was dangerous.’

‘When he finally fell asleep I asked you if you loved him. Do you remember what you said?’

‘I do.’

There is a silence between us. A longing. I feel her body tense as she speaks the words. ‘Tell me again.’

I sigh, suddenly exhausted. ‘Simone.’

‘Please. Just once.’

‘I said that I did. But that it was a new sort of love. A desperate, frantic love.’

She rolls over then. I rest my hand on her back and feel her panting. The sharp, shallow breaths that only he could cause. She shuffles herself away to a cold patch of the mattress and is asleep in minutes.

I feel the veins in my neck tighten. I think of the therapist. How much are we paying her? Enough to live in that bizarre country house, to fund those ridiculous loose-leaf teas. And to what end? So that I can sit at night and listen while my wife cries herself to sleep? So that I can watch as she tosses and turns, endlessly calling his name?

Would there ever be an end to it, or was this simply what we had been reduced to? A sad story you heard whispered about at dinner parties? A page you re-read perpetually, searching for an answer that would never come?

I thrash and twist until the sheets are wrapped round my body, slick with sweat, and then I tear them off me and skulk downstairs to the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of water.

I hold it up to the light and consider throwing it through the window. I imagine ripping the cupboard doors off their hinges, hurling dinner plates into drywall, ripping apart plasterboard. I think about reducing the house down to its very foundation, to nothing. I imagine leaving, surveying the wreckage of my life with a growing distance and feeling a great relief. The act of destruction somehow constructive.

I grip the counter and take a moment to collect myself. When I turn the kitchen faucet off I’m surprised to find that I can still hear the sound of running water.

I open the cupboards beneath the sink and run my hands along the pipework but find them dry to the touch. I wander the house tightening faucet handles and checking radiator valves, but I can’t spot any sign of a leak. When I eventually give up and slide back into bed, Simone stirs. The sound is somehow louder in our bedroom.

‘Do you not hear that?’ I ask her.

‘Hear what?’

‘I can hear running water.’

‘You were probably just dreaming,’ she says hazily.

But I haven’t been to sleep.

XI

The television documents the growing crisis in Oregon in excruciating detail. I see videos of people in the late stages of the illness. Their bodies bloated, the whites of their eyes shot red, their faces engorged. Like an infant, the news cries out for attention, drowning out all conscious thought.