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mind from wandering toward other, more troubling territories.
    Now his energy had withered, leaving him stranded with a three-quarters-painted room and a throbbing callus on his thumb. At least Jane had approved of the house, which made him feel marginally better. He’d known she would. She loved bright, airy spaces; it saddened him that she’d gone from one tiny, dingy house to another, when her work—at least her stained glass work, which Max considered to be her proper job—was all about light. The moment the estate agent had shown him into the house, Jane had popped right into Max’s head. It was pathetic, after all this time, the way she invaded his thoughts. He’d have to get a grip on himself.
    Max rested his roller in the paint tray and rubbed his hands across his jeans. What about Veronica, barging in and ranting on about Jane’s iron levels? He wasn’t accustomed to bargers. It had unnerved him at first, the way she’d invite herself in, presenting him with a carton of milk and a wholemeal loaf before he’d even started unpacking. She was attractive, of course. Model-attractive, if you liked that sort of thing. Why the interest in him—a skinny bloke with an overly large nose and decrepit house, not to mention an ex-wife and daughter? “We’ve all got baggage,” Veronica had told him a few days after their first meeting. “They’re part of your history, Max. Your past makes you what you are today.”
    It had amused him, her habit of talking in self-help soundbites. Of course, Jane wasn’t history. She was anything but. “I guess you’re right,” Max had said. He’d thanked her for the bread and milk and wondered when she might leave. She’d arranged herself prettily on a kitchen chair. He hadn’t fancied her exactly, but there was something about her inane chat and frequent bursts of sparkly laughter than made him feel lighter somehow. Which, after four hours of unpacking his sorry array of belongings, was precisely what he’d needed.
    Max picked up the roller and dunked it into an old paint can which he’d half filled with turpentine. He couldn’t face applying one more stroke of paint to the blasted wall. In fact, as he examined his handiwork, he wasn’t sure that he even liked blue. Where colors were concerned he was beyond hopeless. He’d allowed that young salesguy with vinegar breath to convince him that Hazy Dawn was the perfect shade for a boxroom. “It’s soothing and neutral,” he’d insisted, but on the walls it looked bleak. It matched the way Max felt inside.
    It was occasions like this—following casual meetings with Jane—that reminded him how dismally he’d failed as a human being. There wasn’t even anything decent to eat in the house. He headed downstairs, grateful to escape from the paint smell, figuring that he’d toast the remains of some aging bread. He found himself wishing he had butter or even margarine to spread on it, which struck him as particularly tragic.
    He opened the kitchen cupboard and grabbed a packet of biscuits. They were a brand he’d never heard of, purchased from the nearest corner shop where the depressed-looking owner had been smoking and scattering ash all over a word-search puzzle. Jane and Hannah never opened a cupboard to find only a sole packet of biscuits called ‘Coffee Time.’
    It pained him, as he ripped open the packet, to admit to himself that he’d bought this house fueled by some ridiculous notion that it might bring Jane back to him. As if these huge, light-filled rooms might draw her in like some home-coming bird. He must have been out of his mind. Now he was stuck with a walloping mortgage and three times more rooms than one person required, all requiring major repair.
    A sharp rap on the front door gave Max a start. By the time he’d reached the hall Veronica had let herself in.