— I like burgers, he said.-You like burgers.

The back door was open. It was a hot day, after a week of hot days. He knew: she didn’t want to open the wheelie and shove her face into a gang of flies.

They had small burgers. The kids didn’t complain.

That was that.

Out of his system. He remembered-he saw himself-attacking the meat, hanging over the sink. He closed his eyes, snapped them shut-the idea, the thought, of being caught like that. By a child, by his wife. The end of his life.

He’d killed it-the urge. But it came back, days later. And he killed it again. The fridge again-lamb chops this time. He sent his hand in over the chops, and grabbed a packet of chicken breasts, one of those polystyrene trays, wrapped in cling-lm. He put a finger through the film, pulled it away. He slid the breasts onto a plate-and drank the pink, the near-white blood. He downed it, off the tray. And vomited.

Cured. Sickened-revolted. Never again. He stayed home from work the next day. Vera felt his forehead.

— Maybe it’s the swine flu.

— Chicken pox, he said. You’re such a messer.

— You must have had the chicken pox when you were a boy, she said.-Did you?

— I think so, he said.

She looked worried.

— It can make adult males sterile, she said.

— I had a vasectomy, he told her.-Three years ago.

— I forgot, she said.

— I didn’t.

But he was cured; he’d sorted himself out. The thought, the memory-the taste of the chicken blood, the polystyrene tray-it had him retching all day. He wouldn’t let it go. He tortured himself until he knew he was fixed.

It was iron he was after. He decided that after he’d done a bit of Googling when he went back to work. It made sense; it was fresh air across his face. Something about the taste, even the look, of the cow’s deep red blood-it was metal, rusty. That was what he’d craved, the iron, the metal.