forced day off. I was surrounded by male colleagues working late, picking up speed, their sweat permeating the small office. Ambition was here, somewhere, I knew. But when I went freelance – after Ted was born, to be more available for the children – I was hired by whoever would have me: hotel brochures, private school prospectuses, company training materials. I told myself that I was seeing the world, that I was writing the world. Maybe I was.
But today I couldn’t concentrate. I walked in and out of rooms without purpose, looking out of windows, trying to find something to see. I watched a mother crossing the road with her children, all colour drawn from her face into the street around her, the houses, her children’s wide faces and bright clothes. As they moved across the street, she put her body in front, before theirs, the first thing that would be hit.
In the kitchen, I made a cup of tea, tried to drink it before it was cool enough, felt the scorch on the end of my tongue. I couldn’t stop thinking of Vanessa: her quick glances, her self-possession, the way I’d seen her smiling at Jake. Like a son, I used to think. My stomach turned. I closed my eyes, tried to slow my breathing, but all I could see was the shape of Jake in the dark, the quickness of my movement towards him, the spectral outline of his scratch: like a drawn-on mouth, trying to speak.
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