baby clothes and school books . . . and a mouse. The mouse twitches his whiskers as he gnaws his teeth against the leads. He likes that he has to scratch away at the surface beneath his feet before he can get to the next level. Down and down he goes, each day revealing a new challenge, a different texture, a different lead . . . this is the last of the maze, the only one he hasn’t got through. He knows he is close. The mouse stops for a moment, lifts his nose as an unfamiliar smell floats up through the new crack he has made. It smells like food: warm and inviting. Perhaps if he works even harder at this wire, he will be able to explore where the smell is coming from.
The gentle tapping sound stops, and is instead replaced with a groan, a screech. The teardrops of glass sway to one side; they panic, clattering against each other in disarray: we’re sorry, they say, we can’t help it. Plaster begins to fall like rain and she blinks back the chalky dust. Jennifer knows she should move, but the family of glass tears are falling, saturating her skin with tiny cuts, rivulets of blood coursing across the woman’s skin, flooding the carpet.
I blink.
I’m being ridiculous: ours is only a small chandelier, the most damage it would do would be to give a nasty bump on my head.
I pick up the notebook and re-read my notes. Perhaps I was a little too direct with my suggestions.
‘You went about that in completely the wrong way,’ Kerry begins, peeling an orange.
Like you’re the expert?
She ignores my remark. ‘Nobody likes to be told they are doing something wrong.’
I didn’t tell him he was doing it wrong, just that it would be better if he . . . Never mind.
‘You should have told him what he does that’s right. What you like.’
I like that it makes me feel, makes me feel . . .
Kerry begins to put on her best Aretha Franklin voice and sings, ‘. . . like a nat-ur-al womaaaan.’
I laugh. I’d almost forgotten that she loved Aretha Franklin. How could I have forgotten that? The way that she would throw her head back and belt out the chorus while she was cooking, or driving.
‘Sorry,’ she says, popping a segment into her mouth. ‘Carry on . . . it makes you feel?’
Alive.
‘Lucky you,’ she retorts as tears sting my eyes.
Chapter Ten
Ed
What person likes to be told that they’re doing something wrong in the sack? And how the smeg was I supposed to know that she doesn’t like it when I kiss her ears? That it sounds – and feels (let’s not forget that!) – like an eel slithering around in her ear drum. Well for your information, Jen, I don’t like it when you, when you . . . OK. So I can’t really complain about her in the bedroom . . . especially lately when she’s become so, um, flexible, but I can complain about her complaining. Can’t I?
Yes. In fact, that is what I am going to do right now. She’s in the bath, the kids are asleep, so now is as good a time as any. I take a deep breath and open the door, but as the door swings open, I don’t see my wife lying in the bubbles, a glass of wine by her side and a book in her hands. I see her sitting up, knees hugged between her arms as she sobs.
I sit on the end of the bath. I try to rub the top of her arms, but it feels like I’m tapping an old friend who has had some bad news. She needs more than that. I step into the bath behind her, fully clothed, my jeans sticking to my skin, the water rising until it is almost overflowing. I gather her towards me, wrapping my soaking, clothed arms around her. She lets out the tiniest hint of laughter and then the sobs take over her body.
Chapter Eleven
Jennifer
I open the door to let Mum in, but she is hiding behind a tower of brown cardboard boxes.
‘Hello?’ I greet her, taking one of the boxes and leading the way into the lounge. ‘Are you moving in?’ I throw over my shoulder as I place the box on the table. She lowers hers with an ‘oof!’ then turns to hug me.
‘I thought it was time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘Time to go through these. Let’s open