Together they spat. George reached for his moisturiser, she for hers, branded in the same packaging. In the cupboard on her side of the double sink were the ovulation sticks, but she managed to ignore the sight of them on the shelf. Instead, Veronica dared a purposeful, lingering smile at George in the mirror. He grinned back at her, and as he manoeuvred around her out of the bathroom, again hopefulness flickered inside her chest. Until she realised that as he passed her, he hadn’t attempted to squeeze her bottom, or slip his hand around her waist, or kiss her cheek. And as she watched him climb into bed, she saw that he turned immediately towards the wall.

Veronica felt a bitterness surge inside her. George was relaxed that evening not because of a nascent restoration between them, not because he missed her as much as she missed him, but because of the lateness of the night, the demands of sleep that afforded him, the protection from intimacy, from failure, from her. When, testing him, she snuggled up to him in bed, though it was barely perceptible, she felt his back brace against her.

“Is it time?” he whispered dutifully into the darkness.

“No,” she whispered back.

And then she felt his muscles ease.

Three minutes later, music blared through the bedroom wall.

“Absolutely no fucking way.” George exploded from bed and over to the wall that adjoined the offending neighbours’ flat. He banged with a fist on the brick, but the music was so loud that even with twice the force, nobody would have heard him.

“George,” Veronica soothed. “George, stop, don’t bang.”

“Oh, okay, I won’t bang, I’ll just let this idiot destroy our sleep, again.”

“I’m not saying that,” said Veronica. “Just don’t bang. What’s the point? All it does is make things louder, and annoy me.”

“I annoy you? Not him? He doesn’t?”

“Of course he annoys me.” Apparently they were on different sides again, this time of an argument she hadn’t even realised they were having. “Maybe we should call the noise people? Or the police? After last night…”

George rolled his eyes and banged the wall. His anger was engulfing. It was as though the reoccurrence of noise, the proof of it, gave proof too to all his other unspoken suspicions: proof of abysmal neighbours, proof of dashed hopes; proof of the state between themselves.

“Or what then?” demanded Veronica.

“I’m going round.”

Already George was pulling on his tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt, and stuffing his phone into his pocket, and despite Veronica’s irritation with him, a flash of fear flew suddenly through her throat.

“Don’t,” she choked. “What are you going to say?”

“I’m going to be nice.”

“Really?”

“I’m just going to ask him to turn it down.”

By this point, George was already out of the room and halfway down the stairs, but even if he’d been within grasping distance, Veronica knew there was no way she would have been able to dissuade her husband. He, like she, was a determined, unflinching animal. She, like he, could never have chosen anybody otherwise.