‘Of course you do.’

Eva thought about this exchange. Why would driving to Leeds and back necessitate having a shower? Was the northern air full of grit? Or had he been sweating on the M1? Cursing the lorries? Screaming at tailgaters? Angrily denouncing whatever the weather was doing?

She switched on the bedside lamp.

This provoked another episode of shouting outside, and demands that she, ‘Stop playing silly buggers and unbolt the door!’

She realised that, although she wanted to go downstairs and let him in, she couldn’t actually leave the bed. She felt as though she had fallen into a vat of warm quick-setting concrete, and that she was powerless to move. She felt an exquisite languor spread throughout her body, and thought, ‘I would have to be mad to leave this bed.’

There was the sound of breaking glass. Soon after, she heard Brian on the stairs.

He shouted her name.

She didn’t answer.

He opened the bedroom door. ‘There you are,’ he said.

‘Yes, here I am.’

‘Are you ill?’

‘No.’

Why are you in bed in your clothes and shoes? What are you playing at?’

‘I don’t know’

‘It’s empty-nest syndrome. I heard it on Woman’s Hour.’ When she didn’t speak, he said, Well, are you going to get up?’

‘No, I’m not.’

He asked, ‘What about dinner?’

‘No thanks, I’m not hungry.’

‘I meant what about my dinner? Is there anything?’ She said, ‘I don’t know, look in the fridge.’ He stomped downstairs. She heard his footsteps on the laminate floor he’d laid so ineptly the year before. She knew by the squeak of the floorboards that he’d gone into the sitting room. Soon he was stomping back up the stairs.

‘What the bloody hell has happened to your chair?’ he asked.

‘Somebody left a soup spoon on the arm.

‘There’s soup all over the bloody thing.’

‘I know I did it myself.’