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story we have always told, it was not love at first sight. Our meeting was, in fact, a very ordinary accident. Alice?’
    She abandoned the washers. Instead she arranged nuts and bolts across the carpet in order of size. Small ones; very small ones; tiny ones; teeny-weeny ones.
    ‘I’d like to know the truth,’ said Alan.
    ‘Can we just finish this thing?’ said Alice.
    Something in the conservatory gave a snap.
    Alan prowled with his torch through the green-lit shrubbery. He had an uneasy feeling, as if the ground had suddenly been swished away beneath his feet. He inspected the patio, and then slowly swung the beam of his torch across the conservatory. The room was empty, save for the flashing Christmas tree and the hundreds of pieces and the very large box. There was no sign of structural disturbance. Everything was intact. And reaching forward to touch the cool white plastic-covered frame, Alan too felt solid again.
    If only the weather would do something. You couldn’t say it was warm, but it wasn’t cold either. It was nothing. Colourless skies all day that threatened rain but never brought it, that just hung around loutishly, and low dark cloud at night that sat between the land and the sky like a piece of wadding. All along the avenue the houses pulsed with Christmas lights. No wonder people decorated everything they could lay their hands on with sparkles and baubles like shiny fruit; how else to get through the endless days of dark and cloud? But the truth was that sometimes, very occasionally, Alan had a queasy feeling about Christmas, as if it was just about adding way too many things so that one could enjoy the relief of removing them all again, come January.
    He touched the conservatory walls one more time. No, Alice was wrong. There was no crack.
    Glancing up, Alan was startled to catch a small face peering out from Will’s bedroom window. It looked the loneliest thing. Despite the mild night, Alan shivered and pulled his jacket close. And then the face was gone.
    ‘The noise stopped,’ called Alice. ‘The windows gave a brief rattle and that was the end of it. I suppose it was a bird.’
    ‘Probably,’ said Alan. He placed his shoes back on the rack and padded through to the conservatory.
    Alice was kneeling on the floor amidst the mess of nuts and bolts, engrossed in trying to screw one piece on to another. Her make-up bag was open beside her; she’d applied a new layer of face powder to her red-hot cheeks but they still glowed. One of her straightened sections of hair had also sprung into a zig-zag of curls, right at the back where she couldn’t see. He felt a tug of tenderness.
    She said, ‘I went upstairs to check on Will.’
    ‘Was he all right?’
    ‘Fast asleep.’
    The clock chimed ten.
    Alan crouched on the floor beside Alice. He had a childlike longing to take hold of her hand – he knew it so well, after all, he had seen the skin grow older, he had seen it begin to slacken and crease, but at that moment he felt he knew and loved her hand more than he had ever loved it. Instead he reached for a titanium bolt and screwed it diligently to a plate.
    She said into the stillness, ‘I don’t know what came over me, Alan. All that nonsense about the night we met. I think it’s this kit. All these pieces and no instructions. Of course I was attracted to you.’
    ‘It was the same for me. Linda Spiers had nothing on you.’
    Now they laughed, familiar easy laughter that felt like sitting in comfy chairs.
    ‘Shall I pass you something, Alan?’
    ‘You don’t need to pass me anything, Alice.’
    ‘Oh, I like passing you things.’
    ‘You could pass me the flat-head screwdriver. If you wanted to.’
    ‘I would love that.’ She fetched him another wrench, but he didn’t say anything, he just smiled.
    ‘We have so many stories, Alice. What about the time I surprised you with the fitted kitchen?’
    ‘Oh,’ she said, remembering and laughing. ‘Now that
was
a story.’
    For several