Helen sat at the head of the kitchen table, her coffee mug cradled in front of her as Lydia ate in silence. Lydia was distracted, preoccupied with her phone. Helen ran her finger over a dent in the table top, smoothed by time, then started to say, “So, what’s—”, but Hugh interrupted her as he bustled in, his tie sitting haphazardly, his hair sticking up on one side.

“My glasses. Where are my glasses, Helen?”

“On your head,” she replied.

He reached up, plucked them from his hair and chuckled as he settled them on his nose.

Helen stood up and corrected his Windsor knot, smoothed down a tuft of his white hair.

He kissed her lightly on the cheek, patted her bottom and sat down next to Lydia before pulling the newspaper towards him. Lydia had a smile for him. Helen placed a bowl of steaming porridge in front of him, blueberries bobbing in the milk like men overboard, alongside a mug of overly sweet tea, just the way he liked it.

“Thank you, darling,” he said. “You ok?” But his attention was already on his newspaper. “Nice swim?”

“Yes,” Helen muttered, quelling the urge to say what she really felt.

There was a moment of quiet then, only the rustle of the newspaper and the slurp of tea before the air shifted as Matt sloped in, yawning widely, rings under his eyes. Helen suspected it was another late night of gaming for him. At least that’s what Hugh said he was doing every night when Helen walked past his closed bedroom door and could see the shifting blue light of a computer screen illuminated in the gap beneath it. Helen had her own private suspicions that he was up to something less wholesome.

“Morning son,” Hugh said as Matt flung himself into a chair at the table.

She put toast and peanut butter in front of him, with a banana on the side, but he scowled and said, “Not hungry.”

“Is everything ok?” she asked. He ignored her and pushed the plate away.

There was a stain on the front of his pale grey t-shirt, visible just below the expensive brand name. Hugh gave him a sideways glance and said, “Don’t you have a cleaner shirt for today?”

Matt looked down at the stain and said with a nudge of his head in Helen’s direction, “No, she hasn’t done my washing.”

“Darling, can you sort that out for him today please?” Hugh had barely looked at Helen so far, but he could see a stain a mile away.

She clenched her teeth, knowing full well that the laundry had been done, but cursing herself for not checking Matt’s bedroom floor for the pile of dirty clothes that wouldn’t have made it into the hamper in his bathroom a few steps away.

“Of course, sorry, I must’ve missed some things,” she said.