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Something happens for the first time there, later it will happen frequently and eventually she gets so used to it that she forgets that two people can have more than one nice week together. The dramas, the scenes, the quarrels and the sweet reconciliations. Howling, screaming, breaking things, figh…

‘She’s upset,’ he says when Ida comes back. ‘She says that maybe she still loves me.’

That is how you feel when you are on the verge, when you are about to experience loss.

‘What are you thinking?’ Ida wants to know.

He runs his hand over the back of his head, the heat has left small beads…

She pulls the duvet over both of them and tucks it under them, under him and herself, little Arnold, my darling, my beloved. But at the same time a little voice at the back of her mind is saying: Is this how it’s going to be? Will he always be the child?

The fourth time. She offers to call them a taxi. She offers, yes, she does all the running. She goes out to buy breakfast, she offers, yes, she nips out to get it. She makes coffee, yes, she offers, and carries it and milk and cups on the tray and washes up afterwards.

‘I’ll do it,’ she says and…

Except now he doesn’t know what he wants. He chuckles. Now she has been put in her place, now she is where she should be. His voice is calm as it was on her answering machine, laid-back as if he can barely be bothered to talk, as if there is nothing at stake for him, as if he doesn’t mind either wa…