When she returned to her own room, she was disconcerted to find that Poppy was wearing her favourite fluffy acrylic dressing gown, had climbed under her duvet and was sobbing into her pillow Brianne didn’t know what to do, so she put the kettle on and asked, ‘Shall I phone the police?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve been defiled enough?’ shouted Poppy. ‘I’ll just sleep in your bed tonight, with you.’
Thirty minutes later, Brianne was clinging on to the edge of the bed. She vowed to go to the university library tomorrow and source a book on how to grow a backbone.
4
On the second day Eva woke and threw the duvet back and sat on the side of the bed.
Then she remembered that she didn’t have to get up and make breakfast for anyone, yell at anyone else to get up, empty the dishwasher or fill the washing machine, iron a pile of laundry, drag a vacuum cleaner up the stairs or sort cupboards and drawers.’ clean the oven or wipe various surfaces, including the necks of the brown and the red sauce bottles, polish the wooden furniture, clean the windows or mop the floors, straighten rugs and cushions, shove a brush down various shitty toilets or pick up soiled clothing and place it in a laundry basket, replace light bulbs and toilet rolls, pick up things from downstairs that were upstairs and bring them down or pick up things from upstairs that were downstairs, fetch dry-cleaning, weed the borders, visit garden centres to buy bulbs and annuals, polish shoes or take them to the key cutter, return library books, sort recycling, pay paper bills, visit one mother and worry about not visiting one mother-in-law, feed the fish and clean out the filter, answer the phone for two teenagers and pass on messages, shave legs or pluck eyebrows, give self-manicure, change the sheets and pillow cases on three beds (if it was Saturday), hand wash woollen jumpers and dry flat on a bath towel, pay bills, shop for food she wouldn’t eat herself, wheel it to the car, unload it into the boot, drive home, put the food away in the fridge and the cupboards and, on tiptoe, place tins and dried goods on a shelf that exceeded her reach but was perfectly comfortable for Brian.