I could feel him slouched there in the other chair, squinting at the newspaper. Then I turned the music up so loud the yoke was hopping off the table. I could hardly bear it myself, but there wasn't a blink out of him. I don't know why I did it. I just did. I felt a bit sorry after, when I thought about his eyes just staring at the paper, but sure what harm was in it?

When Michael was a baby and he started crying, he used to qo into him in his pelt. I told him it wasn't right, and he launched into this lecture about how we're all beautiful in the eyes of God; that it was only our own bad thoughts that made us wear clothes at all. He could be so high and mighty sometimes.

Look at me. Crying again. It's the same every single day. One minute I'm laughing at something he or someone else said years ago: the next, tears are rolling down my face. Then I think of something else and I'm alright again. Like the night he got up to Michael and when he didn't bring him back to our bed. I went in to see what he was at. There he was, naked as the day he was born, rocking the end of the cot and counting 2366, 2367, 2368....

When I asked him what he meant, he said it again. I bought it because I had a premonition. I said maybe you're going to take up Judo and he wasn't a bit amused. I kept at him till he said he had this terrible feeling that he was going to die in his sleep. He was standing there, waiting for me to pay for the eiderdown, when he saw this picture of himself lying dead in the bed with me trying to wake him up. What would you do then, he said, and not a stitch in the house for when the doctor, the priest or a neighbour came in? And that's why he bought the pyjamas. Because he had a premonition. I said will you go on out of that, you were never a day sick in your life.

Imagine not wanting to look at your own husband. I used to love him. I really did. Sometimes when we'd be watching the news or eating the dinner, I'd stare at him till he asked me what I was gawking at. I could've looked at him forever. Some days now, I don't even feel sorry for him. I know it's terrible but I don't. When be tries to touch me, I go as stiff as a board. The other night he said he might as well be holding a corpse, but I can't help it. I want to be nice to him, but I just can't. Even when he starts to cry, it would be the easiest thing in the world to put my arms around him, but I can't. continue