The baby looked at him, then back down at the leaves she was holding.
He stood in the middle of the road. No one else went past. He saw no one except a farmer, small and faint, walking through a field in the distance. The baby went to sleep. Her hand slackened and the leaves fell out. He turned and started walking back. Soon the dishes rose up in front of him. One of them was pointing down at the valley. It stayed like that all night.
His wife hummed low, monotonous tunes in the shower. She used to sing pop songs, ballads, those deep, soulful ones where she used the showerhead as a microphone, but now she just hummed the same thing over and over, quietly and without stopping, like static on an old radio.
While she was in the shower, music started up behind the wall. It was slow but with a heavy beat that thrummed through the floor. It was coming from somewhere near the kitchen, then it faded and seemed to move into the living room, then down the hall, as if it was in the pipes or the wires.
Jay’s heart gave a strange lurch. He banged on the wall. ‘Stop it,’ he said. He banged again. ‘Stop it.’
The music didn’t stop. He followed it through the house. It was louder near the bathroom. When he went in, it sounded like it was in the room, low and slow and echoing off the tiles.
He could see Lorna through the steam. She was washing her hair and there was soap and bubbles all over her head. She was humming and her eyes were closed.
There was a thump near the door, and then the sound of breathing only a few inches from where Jay was standing. A cold draught came under the door. Any moment now Lorna would rinse off the soap and take her hands away from her ears and then she would hear.
The breathing got louder. The music surged. Lorna ducked her head under the water and shampoo ran down her neck and onto her shoulders.
He stood in the middle of the room, clenching his hands. His nails dug into his palms. He could tell, even behind the music, the particular way the body would be pressing against the wall.
Stop, he said silently. Stop it.
Lorna shook her wet hair and turned off the shower.
The music stopped.
She opened her eyes and when she saw Jay she let out a faint cry and put her hand on her chest, looking at him for a moment as if she didn’t recognise him at all.
The phone rang from behind the wall. It rang and then it cut out, then it rang again. Still no one answered it.
It was lunchtime and Jay was cleaning up. The baby had woken him every few hours in the night and he kept knocking things onto the floor – cups, bits of food. The baby would lean down out of her chair and try to help him pick them up, then almost topple out, so he would straighten her, and then she would do it again, clapping her sticky hands.
Soon Lorna would be home and he would start cooking something for dinner.
He ran the sink full of hot water. It was cold in the house, his hands were cold and he was looking forward to dipping them in.
An engine revved suddenly and he looked up just in time to see the van speed away past the window. The tyres left a burning smell on the air.
He picked up a plate and put it in the sink. He washed it and stacked it on the draining board. Bubbles ran down and pooled in the grooves. He started on another plate.
A door slammed and someone shouted from behind the wall.
He fumbled with the plate, dropped it in the sink, and hot water splashed over his feet.
There was a bang, then voices. ‘Why did you?’ someone said. ‘Why did you do it?’ There was another bang, and a long silence.
Jay picked up the plate. It had cracked down the middle. He stroked the baby’s cheeks. She seemed fine; she was pushing a bit of cracker around her tray, jabbing at it until it was wet and crumbly.
‘Ham nu for,’ she said, pointing to it.
‘It’s OK,’ Jay told her. ‘It’s OK.’
He dried his hands, sat down, then got up and opened the door. He went outside and paced around the front of the houses. There were no cars; the house next door looked empty. In another house, further up the row, washing billowed on the line; trousers and shirts straining against their pegs as if they were trying to get away.
Something moved behind next door’s window. Jay ran to the door and raised his hand to knock, his hand was in a fist, it was almost on the door, then he stopped and brought his hand down. He stood on the step for a long time.
The baby watched him. ‘Wayha do int?’ she said one morning. She looked at him carefully, as if she was waiting for an answer.
His wife got home late and they sat, almost asleep, on the sofa in front of the TV. Jay flicked through the channels – there were old programmes on that they used to watch, repeats that seemed half-familiar, the jokes coming in slightly different places than he remembered.
He put his arm round Lorna and she leaned her head back against him. He could see the freckle behind her ear. It was tiny, hardly more than a dot. He used to kiss her there.
She yawned and leaned in closer. Her hair was kinked from wearing headphones at work most of the day. Her eyes were dry and flecked with red.
The audience on the TV laughed raucously at something and he found the remote and turned it down.
He could hear her watch ticking. There was a phrase they used to say to each other when they’d first met – something about clocks or time, because she always used to be late, and he was about to say it to her, it used to make her laugh. But he couldn’t remember it.
He’d seen her earlier on his phone and he’d grabbed it, almost yanked it out of her hands, but she was just checking a friend’s number. His hand had been shaking and he’d gone upstairs so that she wouldn’t notice.
He turned the volume up on the TV again and Lorna sighed and shifted her head so that it was against the cushion instead of his chest, and her hips moved, just slightly, away from his. His hand started to shake again, but it was nothing, he’d deleted everything, there had been no more phone calls. Any moment now she would turn back and lean against him again.
He was putting away the washing up – the cups and plates and glasses – in the cupboards and drawers. Everything was clean. Dinner was cooking. He was ahead for once. He lined the cups up carefully, and stacked the plates on top of each other. The glasses caught the light and gleamed.
A
