It wasn’t that Bess wanted birthday fireworks or anything of the sort, not at her age, but for Mario not to have a card ready was disappointing. Duck or not. When they were younger, he used to regularly leave cards and notes for her to find, sometimes just a postcard with a heart on it, others crammed with tiny writing: long, descriptive, effusive ramblings of what she meant to him and how very, very thankful he was that she was his wife. They had made her feel nice. Safe. It had been some years now since a card of that nature had been left under her pillow or propped up against the kettle. She sat on the sofa with her legs tucked beneath her and Chutney illegally by her side. Sipping at coffee that had cooled to the point of unpleasant – although at this hour, caffeine was caffeine – she felt a small bite of resentment that was hard to explain.

An irritatingly catchy tune came through the TV. How this advert grated on her nerves: ‘For all your skip-hire needs, call P . . .’ She pressed mute and rubbed at the twitch beneath her left eye. The sound of her husband thudding around in the bathroom overhead caused her to look up and sigh. He was so noisy. The ceiling light in the lounge shook as he slammed the shower screen door, as he did every morning.

‘For the love of God!’ she whispered under her breath. She took in the empty mug, folded newspaper and discarded crisp packet down by the side of Mario’s chair. There was a loud rap on the front door. She opened it to find Jim the postman standing on the step with his heavy bag slung across his body. It was unusual for him to knock. Ordinarily whatever he had to deliver was small enough and flat enough to plop through the letterbox without further interaction. She greeted him with a smile. Her mum liked to remind her that in an emergency it was good to be able to call out to someone like the postman. Although, in fairness, Bess was hard pushed to think of an emergency in which Jim would shine, plus the chances of him being at the end of the driveway in such an event seemed slim.

‘Someone’s popular!’ the postman said cheerily, waving a fan of pastel envelopes in her direction.