Neither had yet dared to voice it, but the horrific noise of the previous night had been a devastating disappointment: the idyllic home far from idyllic, George’s hard-earned savings invested foolishly, the new start tainted already. Yes, this is what should be occupying Veronica’s mind. But as she sipped her coffee and picked again at her toast, she couldn’t stop picturing the visuals that might have accompanied the sounds – the woman against their adjoining wall, the baby unattended. Why was the child not crying now? Where was its mother? Veronica looked at her watch again and tapped her fingers impatiently against the window, subconsciously scratching her thigh. She would have to leave for her new job soon. It might not be possible for her to determine what had happened after the sounds had ceased.

Moving her plate and mug to the sink, Veronica gave them a quick rinse before loading them into the new Miele dishwasher. There was something acutely satisfying about these tiny gestures of homeliness. She and George had lived together for almost four years now in various rented flats, and before that she had house-shared in a lovely maisonette in Chelsea. All were sufficiently homely, but all were launch pads rather than bases, and she’d rarely stayed inside any of them long enough to make a meal, let alone do the washing up. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her own mother do the dishes. This isn’t to say that she didn’t do them – her father would never have found himself in the kitchen and they didn’t have a maid in every country they lived in, so her mother must have washed up sometimes. But Veronica didn’t have a visual memory of this. She couldn’t picture her at the sink. She couldn’t conjure images of a roast cooking in the oven, or potato peelings littering the counter, or her mother letting her taste the bubbling Bolognese straight from the pan on a metal spoon that burned her tongue. Those were experiences she’d collected from other mothers, the mothers of friends who invited her sometimes for a bank holiday weekend, or Easter lunch, or for a three-week stint the last summer before everything altered.

Glancing again at her watch, Veronica flipped the dishwasher closed with her foot, and sprinted up the stairs to the bedroom where she planted herself in front of her newly filled wardrobe. There hung the red and the blue, but now she couldn’t seem to make a decision. Neither could she decide whether to tie her blonde hair into a proficient bun, or let it hang soft and loose. Or whether to invite the new parents she would be meeting into the classroom at the end of the day so that she could say a few words to the group, or stick to individual hellos and handshakes at the classroom door. The itching of her legs was incessant.

Veronica closed her eyes and pushed her hand towards the competing materials. Red. She switched to blue.