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with their noses buried in the soft fabric, looking tiny and vulnerable and ridiculous.
    In fact, what I did with that shirt the other day was cut it up into about a hundred pieces, put it into a Jiffy bag and post it to him. Registered post, just to be sure. He called me when he got it.
    He said, ‘Nice touch.’
    I said, ‘I thought so.’
    ‘Should I expect more parcels of this nature?’
    ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said. ‘Although you left those cords  behind. The yellow ones, remember? They deserve a good hacking.’
    He said, ‘They’re beige.’
    ‘Anyway, I can’t get the scissors through them. The material is too thick.’
    A pause. And then, ‘How is your rib?’
    ‘It hurts,’ I said, even though it doesn’t. Not anymore.
    ‘And everything else?’
    ‘Fine,’ I told him.
    Another pause. I could hear him gearing up to say goodbye. ‘You could come over and collect the cords,’ I said, holding my breath in the pause that followed.
    He knew what I meant. We’ve had post-break-up sex much more often than would be considered appropriate in a break-up guide book, I’d say.
    ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea anymore,’ he said.
    ‘I never thought it was a good idea. Yellow cords.’
    ‘They’re beige.’ He laughed. I always loved his laugh. The sound of it. Girlish. Almost a giggle. And the fact that I could still make him laugh.
    ‘So are you coming?’ I kept my voice light, unconcerned. The pause was the worst one yet. The one that told me we were nearly there, Thomas and I. Despite the dragging of my feet all the way, it was nearly done.
    Then he told me. ‘Kat,’ he said. ‘I . . . I’ve been meaning to tell you . . .’
    Still I said nothing. But I knew. I knew what he was going to say. Minnie saw them. She mentioned it. She said, ‘It’s probably nothing but . . .’
    Thomas said, ‘I’m sort of seeing someone.’
    I said, ‘How do you sort of see someone?’
    ‘I mean, I am. I’m seeing someone.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Her name is Sarah.’
    ‘Sarah? Sarah Keeling? From the Farmers Journal ?’
    ‘Yes. I didn’t think you knew her.’
    ‘I met her once. Tall. Bony. Pointy tits.’
    ‘Where did you meet her?’
    ‘When you forced me to go to the cattle mart, remember?’
    ‘I didn’t force you to go.’
    ‘It doesn’t seem like the type of thing I’d attend of my own free will.’
    Thomas didn’t say anything to that. It sounded like he was rubbing his forehead. He does that when he’s tired.
    ‘You went out with her before, didn’t you?’
    ‘That was years ago.’
    ‘She told me. When we were at the trough. You’d gone to examine hooves or something.’
    ‘Anyway . . . I wanted to tell you, you know, just in case . . . ’
    ‘In case what?’ I said. I was impressed by my voice. It sounded like the voice of somebody who was thinking about what to have for dinner.
    ‘In case . . . you know . . . look, I just didn’t want you hearing about it from anybody else, OK?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t it be fine?’
    We haven’t spoken since then. It’s just as well, really. The past is better left behind. It’s time to move on. That’s what Minnie says. And in the daytime, it’s fine. It really is. I have Ed and Minnie and my writer’s block and being nearly forty and the faint, lingering pain in my one hairline-fractured rib to distract me.
    It’s only at night.
    Four o’clock in the morning, in particular. Your resources are depleted at this hour. Your resolve is not what it should be. I let myself out onto the balcony and rummage in my dressing-gown pocket for a pack of cigarettes. My hands shake and it takes a while to get one of them lit.
    ‘You OK, baby?’
    I look round. There is no one here but me.

 
    It’s Friday night. Ant and Adrian are home for the weekend. They come home a lot now. They are twins, which means that they look the same and talk the same and they used to do a magic disappearing act when