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to me like that at the student union. The night we first met.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t you remember?’
    Alice squinted at the crack in the wall. She could have sworn it gave a shiver. ‘I was drunk.’
    ‘Drunk? You? I don’t think so …’
    ‘Yup. Completely trolleyed.’
    ‘
Alice?
’
    ‘Pissed as a fart. Smashed.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    Alan laughed again, but it no longer sounded like happy laughter. ‘You weren’t drunk. It was love at first sight. You saw me and you ran into my arms. “My, you’re great,” you said. Come on, Alice – you know this story. You had that funny accent I could never understand. Remember?’
    A dart of cold air shot from the crack in the wall straight to Alice’s mouth. ‘Mind your
feet
, I said! I was trying to get to the loo! Mind your honking great, winkle-pickered, who-do-you-think-you’re-kidding feet! You were standing in my way! Even in our wedding photographs you were standing in my way! Not to mention when you finally got me to the hospital and the midwife yelled at me to push!’ Alice slammed her hands to her mouth.
    Alan was staring up at her from the floor and he wasn’t laughing, happily or otherwise. ‘What did you just say?’ He sounded winded.
    Alice fumbled behind her for the settee and lowered herself on to it. Her knee joints felt weak and her cheeks were aflame. What had happened to her mouth? She reached for a tiny thing that looked as if it might fit on to another tiny thing, if she just pressed them together, very slowly and deliberately. ‘I’ll work on this bit, shall I?’
    ‘But that’s our
story
,’ said Alan. ‘We’ve always talked about how we met at the student union. How you ran into my arms and it was love at first sight.’ He picked up a screwdriver. ‘Though now you mention it, it’s only fair to add I had my eye on someone else.’
    ‘
You?
’ she said, in a disbelieving way that he didn’t quite like. ‘Who?’
    ‘A young lady called Linda Spiers.’
    ‘Linda Spiers? Not
the
Linda Spiers? She had breasts the size of my head.’
    ‘She found me very entertaining.’
    ‘Well, well,’ Alice said tightly. ‘I had no idea.’ She placed the tiny thing inside a pair of pliers and tried to wedge the pliers between her knees. They jumped out and bit her fingers. ‘Oh,’ she cried, dropping everything, ‘this stupid
thing
won’t go on to
this
stupid thing.’
    ‘That is because they don’t, Alice. They are both washers. So hang on, what are we saying here?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    If only the kit was not so complicated. If only the instructions made some sense. If only they’d bought a bike from a shop, all grown-up and ready-made. She wasn’t even sure Will wanted a bike, not really. Who knew what he wanted? As a little boy he had been so happy, so inquisitive. He had followed her everywhere, constantly chattering. These days she was lucky if she got so much as a hello. It was like talking to a person who was not there.
    She suspected he was being bullied at school. She watched him walk up the garden path every afternoon, his head so low it looked too heavy for his shoulders, and she felt pulled apart. Only a few weeks ago she’d had a meeting with his head of year, Miss King, a cherry-faced woman, possibly because she was zipped to the chin in a brand-new puffy skiing jacket. Alice had explained all about Will’s silence, his frequent headaches, how he wasn’t himself any more. Miss King had listened carefully and then she had asked such terrible questions Alice had felt ill; she had actually felt assaulted. ‘I think Will is going through a period of adjustment,’ Miss King had finally said. And she had given Alice a steady, meaningful look that implied …
what
?
    Alice had no idea. She’d fled before she could work it out.
    But that was not the point. Alan was still talking. He was still going over the night when they first met. ‘It seems to me that what we’re saying is that contrary to the