6.19 am

Here she is.

Ruth wakes with a full bladder, still half in a dream of being somewhere else. Where was it she had been, but no, work out where this is. Monday morning. Home. With the other side of the bed empty.

In the bathroom she flicks on the light, sits to pee, and automatically checks her underwear. No blood. Silent thanks. She will report this at the hospital later. All fine! Only a check-up! It’s not so easy to quell the fear though. Maybe she should go back to bed for a few last moments, it’s still early enough. But she has that sticky after-feeling of a feverish night. May as well shower.

She dips down to make sure the plug is out and there is a rush of dizziness, a clouding.

‘Is this what you want?’ he had asked last night, almost as they were hanging up. And Ruth had thought, what if I tell the truth? Perhaps, though, he wasn’t really asking. Perhaps he didn’t want to know the answer. She cannot, now, even remember his intonation. ‘Is this what you want?’ Was it a question or an accusation?

The pipes make that little groaning noise before the water starts, a recriminating pause – she was meant to arrange a boiler service, dear god let it not break on her watch. Ruth steps under the water, feels the first flush of heat on her skin. But the question will not leave her. Perhaps she should turn the shower off, get out, undo it all, phone Aidan back? She imagines herself asking him, ‘What did you mean when you said the thing about wanting?’ But he is probably still asleep, he can sleep through anything, noise, emotional turmoil, you name it he has slept, is sleeping, through it. It is one more fact in her case against him, that he is a good sleeper.

Shampoo twice, that’s a thing she does now, once with the cheap stuff, once with the lemongrass. Sometimes she gives herself a blast of cold water at the end. But this morning, Ruth turns the heat up, hoping to melt the anxiety knotted in her chest.

Water off, fan still whirring. Perhaps her neighbour on the other side of the wall, quite a thin wall really, hears it, hears her, knows her? The intimacies, the rhythms of someone else’s life revealed through the click of switches. Pull the shower curtain back, shake yourself, step onto the mat. ‘We’re self-domesticating animals,’ he’d said once, early on, and she’d resisted this at the time, wanting something more than an image of a herd of cows shooing themselves into a byre, romantic love should bring something better to mind. And now, here they are: undomesticating.

The towel snags a little on the door hook, loop it up, pull it down, wrap yourself, try to remember what he said before the wanting part? Something about how she ‘did not consider at all …’ She had tuned out, though, before the full onslaught (a protective instinct), so she cannot now say exactly what it was she did not consider, though she can make a fair guess, of course. The point is, she considers a lot, too much. Back in the bedroom, glance at the clock, still not even seven, rest on the side of the bed, just for a moment. It wasn’t surprising, really, that she hadn’t taken in what he was saying.

He had not come home. He had not come home, that was the thing. Sunday morning had come and gone and at midday all she’d got was a text saying: DELAYED. Anything could have happened.

Ruth should get dressed, dry her hair, pull herself together. But she feels marooned on the edge of the bed. Their bed. Her bed. First client at half eight. It always seems like a good idea when you’re writing it into your diary: Monday morning, 8.30 session. Like, yes, that will give me a good start to the week. Now it feels like one more act of sabotage. Some threads on the towel (a wedding present) hanging loose, she picks at one. Feet frozen and yet she does not move. ‘Sirena,’ he used to call her, as she lay in their sex sheets or curled around the duvet, when he was clean and out of the shower before her. ‘My sirena, time to get up.’ The radio news clicks on. ‘Good morning, it’s seven o’clock on Monday, October the seventh …’ Perhaps this is what she gets for liking herself. It had always been her mother’s refrain, ‘Oh, somebody likes themselves,’ as if diagnosing a slip in moral judgement. Is that what she has done, liked herself too much, slipped up, driven Aidan away?

Ruth should think of clothes, but she has no clothes for who she is meant to be today. Counsellor. Patient. Wife. Wife? She stands, a monumental achievement. Her right hip is stiff, knuckles massage the part where the edge is – is there something wrong with it? With the bone, the socket, the joint? Or is this just what her body does now, at forty-three? Swing the wardrobe door open, make a choice. To run. Or to stay. Or just which jacket to wear, Ruth, no need to make everything a production.

Last night, when he’d finally rung, he’d told her the sales conference had ended on Saturday. But he’d found himself, he said – as if he couldn’t help it somehow – found himself extending his booking. So, not delayed. ‘They had the room available,’ he said. Ruth looks in the mirror, sees her still-creased face, sees her body in the navy suit, thinks, oh, this is who I am. But the thought is drowned by the roar of the hairdryer.

Downstairs, a glance at the clock shows not enough time for breakfast, but she can’t face it anyway, as if the milk might curdle in her. ‘You’re not easy,’ Aidan had said, and she had been unable to answer, suffused with anger – or was it sadness? ‘I don’t know how I feel,’ she’d managed. ‘Isn’t that your job?’ he’d said.

Ruth’s bag is packed, she hauls on her coat, checks keys and wallet, pulls the front door behind her. The October air meets her skin, damp, cold. Check the sky. Two minutes less light each day until December. Did she lock the door? She goes back to check. Locked, of course. The garden gate is stiff, she should oil it or spray some stuff on it, whatever you did. The square is still quiet, dormant looking. They joke about it being called a square when there’s only three sides. ‘Brighton Triangle,’ Ruth has joked how many times? Had she ever really sounded that smug? Liking herself, her original sin.

But then, Ruth rounds the corner, you might as well like yourself, since you’re the only person you move through life with. Even if you got married, even if you stood in front of a room full of people, though not her mother, who could not be persuaded, even if you stood there and said – promised – that you would always be together, the reality is different. You have yourself and that is it. Empty side of the bed proof of that.

She’s on the main road now, the sound of traffic, the sight of other people on the street, the whiff of coffee from the new place beside the Office Supplies shop. Like all her senses switching on. Only seven-something, but the cars are tailing back. Three people waiting at the bus stop, Ruth crosses at the lights, takes her place in the queue.

It’s not like she hasn’t asked the question herself. Is this what I want?

The truth is: No.

The truth is: Yes.