The Night Before

The Husband

Loll is big on commenting ‘as a mother’.

Who gets to feel more, as an anything, I always think.

So how could she, who places so much emphasis on her identity as a mother, believe that what Romilly did was okay?

She read me, then.

‘I am not saying what she’s done is great,’ she rasped because I had been inching tighter and tighter incrementally. ‘I am saying that what she has done may, perhaps, be understandable. Given a very unusual set of circumstances.’

‘Which are?’

‘You tell me, Marc,’ she said and I felt her throat move beneath my hands again. ‘You tell me.’

I tightened.

And tightened.

And tightened.