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of him rattling in the medicine cupboard in the en-suite bathroom or searching in a drawer. Half asleep, half awake, those were the moments when, at the sight of her shadowy, rummaging husband, she experienced their estrangement most sharply.
    Still reeling from his news, she kicked off her shoes, padded to the window and drew the curtains. Their weave (and extra interlining) was satisfyingly heavy to handle, and their tea-rose ashy pink suggested peace, erotic sensuousness and goodness: all the positive and beautiful aspirations with which Annie currently had a tricky relationship.
    The morning had been normal – the kind of morning when she operated on automatic. Before leaving for work, she had stripped the bed and stuffed the sheets into the laundry basket. She had made it with clean sheets, drawing the bottom one as tight as a drum, as she liked it. She had dressed in her customary uniform of skirt, blouse and jacket, selected a pair of shoes that gave a nod to frivolity without going over the top, and tutted over the state of her hair. All accomplished in the calm, reasonably well-organized manner that Annie had perfected.
    But tonight the feminine order of her bedroom was totally at odds with the storm that had been unleashed. It also struck her as ridiculous that Tom was across the corridor, battling alone with his shock.
    She knocked on his door and went in.
    Tom sat on the bed with the empty brandy glass, apparently absorbed in the spectacle of his bare feet. He did not even turn his head at Annie’s entrance.
    She sat down beside him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?’
    ‘There’s nothing to say.’
    Silence.
    Talking was Tom’s thing. He had talked his way into university, into Annie’s heart and bed, and into the job he had just lost. Fluent, funny, opinionated, he was toleratedeven when he went too far and, in the old days, they had argued passionately, joyously, with gusto. Talking was his breathing, and silence was his dying.
    The space between them on the bed seemed indicative. ‘We can make plans, Tom, budget … until you get a new job.’
    ‘Nice idea. Why didn’t I think of it?’
    ‘That won’t help.’ She was soft, conciliatory, let’s-take-this-gently.
    ‘Actually,’ he was at his most sarcastic, ‘the lawyer is concerned about what he terms the “architecture of my future”. Everyone’s concerned for the architecture of my future, including the organization that’s just dumped me. It’s terribly, terribly nice of them.’
    ‘Well, you do have a future.’
    He turned his head and glared right through her. She prayed that he couldn’t see her panic. ‘Don’t you get it? I probably won’t find another job. A fifty-year-old radio executive ain’t exactly hot goods at the best of times.’
    He sounded surprised at his own analysis – although they both knew he was probably right and Annie also knew she was expected to refute it. ‘And you’re going to give up, are you? Despite knowing that’s rubbish.’
    ‘Say that again in six months’ time. Have you been listening to what’s going on in the money markets?’
    ‘Stop it, Tom.’
    ‘Don’t pity me, Annie.’
    She set her lips. ‘I’m not.’
    Side by side they sat, not touching. Annie searched for an object on which to anchor and lighted on the long mirror hanging from a dodgy nail on the wall – Mia had insistedon having it before she’d stopped caring about what she looked like.
    Tom’s tightened fist rested on his thigh. If she reached over and picked up that clenched hand – a simple gesture – the odds were she could smooth out the fingers and stroke them into quietude. But she could no longer gauge whether he wished to be touched. For all Annie knew, he would push her away and that would wound her. Then again, she was out of the habit of touching him, of wanting to touch him.
    ‘Just get through the next few days …’ she pitched expectations low ‘… and then you can think.’
    On