The middle of the night is a desert in which mirages appear. One of the mirages is TV.

When Jacob and Clare were little, we used to wonder how such small people could make so much noise. We tried a process called controlled crying (often known as Ferberizing), which basically means that you don’t pick up the child as soon as they start to cry but wait for a while—even a long while—in the hope that they will learn to comfort and settle themselves.

Controlled crying is not the right name for such uncontrolled misery. We started out with two babies crying. Before long, this had increased to two babies, a toddler, and two adults crying. The only positive is that the sight of mom and dad sitting on the living room floor and sobbing fit to break the drought did, at one point, create a thirty-second hiatus. Perhaps the little ones were simply stunned.

Sometimes we found ourselves perched in front of the screen in the small hours of the night looking at a TV wasteland that made the drought-stricken properties of some of our neighbors seem lush. Jenny would strap herself into a device called a twin feeding pillow, and Jacob and Clare would then be fitted around her like lifeboats on the side of a ship. I would sulk in the background looking like a martyr but not helping very much, except to offer a cup of tea, which I knew Jenny would refuse because the twin feeding pillow could become pretty choppy and we didn’t want to risk hot tea spilling onto the lifeboats.

It was during this time that I became acquainted with the spectacle known as the late-night infomercial.

Advertisers know all about the quick hit, the sudden jolt that can crumple the soul on impact. Apparently, all you have to do is look at a billboard for three seconds or an image in a magazine for five seconds and then you’re hooked. But there is a special skill in the long, slow campaigns of attrition, the ones that grind you down over a grueling thirty minutes on TV, a period so long that you need to have advertisements within the advertisement to break it up. The ads within the ad are for the same product but are made to look and sound a bit different. You think it’s a respite, but the toll-free number at the end is just the same as the one that has been burning into your skull for the last quarter of an hour.

In our late-night sessions, Jenny and I saw an infomercial for an acne treatment that was so desperate for material it included an interview with a pimple, which vowed and swore that nothing brought fear to its heart more than the name of the stuff we were being asked to buy. We also saw an advertisement for a pillow that seemed to go out of its way to be as boring as possible because its basic inducement went something like, “Wouldn’t you rather be tucked up in bed being entertained by your own dreams than listening to this drivel?” The pillow, we were told, was allergy-free and guaranteed to help in recovery from a long list of medical conditions, which, in a way, was a legitimate line of argument because it’s hard to think of any medical condition that is not helped by a good night’s sleep.

The pillows were sold as a pair. They had speakers inside, so you and your beloved could listen to music of which some sultry examples were supplied. Or, it was suggested, you could deal once and for all with the snoring of your partner by listening to recordings of the sound of the sea or of birds or of rain pattering gently on a tin roof, all of which were available on CD from the same toll-free number. I wondered aloud if a CD of falling rain might be a nice Christmas present for our drought-affected neighbors.

One night after Clare was sick, she was up for a middle-of-the-night feeding. She hadn’t been eating much, so we were glad that now—at five past three in the morning—something was beginning to go into her belly. Our DVD player, which sat under the TV, displayed the time in green, so we could watch the minutes tick past as, for half an hour, somebody tried to sell us a set of knives.

These knives could do anything, it seemed. In half an hour, you don’t just get to see them slip through ripe tomatoes and frozen steak. We saw them make light work of leather, small branches, and a phone directory (although it was never explained why anyone would ever need a kitchen knife to deal with these aspects of reality). Then the big promise: in a minute, we would get to see the knife cut through a tin can.

“Couldn’t a can opener do the job?” I asked aloud.

Clare was still feeding.

Before we could see the trick with the can, we were told to get a pencil to write down the toll-free number. We were also advised to have our credit cards ready. The TV had assumed we were now under a spell. We would do whatever it asked.

We saw the knife chew through a tin of soup whose contents spilled onto the demonstration bench.

“That wouldn’t happen with a can opener,” I said. “With a can opener, you need to keep the can upright.”

Jenny ignored me, her attention on Clare.

Next, the knives went out on the streets, which seemed to me a risky thing to do. The proud demonstrator approached strangers with a can of beans and a knife and let them try for themselves. (I can’t help but worry that people have died making these advertisements.) Male and female, young and old, the passersby were all duly impressed. One of them said that his grandfather used to open tins of beans with a rifle, so perhaps the knives were a step toward a more peaceful world. Never did anybody mention the fact that a can opener might achieve the same end.

A bit of color was returning to Clare’s cheeks.

“It won’t be long before she’s ready for baked beans,” I said.

Jenny looked at me with concern, worried that I was about to pick up the phone.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t be buying knives. We already have a can opener.”

Suddenly, the TV played its trump card. It said that if you rang now, there were people waiting to talk to you. It didn’t say they would take your money and send you knives that you may not need. It didn’t say that the number to call just happened to be the same number you call if you wanted acne stuff or pillows or, God knows, pogo sticks or treadmills or CDs of the greatest-ever country hits, although they never say what country. The promise it made was that, if you rang now, you wouldn’t be speaking to a machine. You would be chatting with a real person. By now it was obvious that there are people so desperate for company in the middle of the night that they will buy pillows, knives, and acne stuff just to hear a friendly voice.

Insomnia is a lonely place. In the middle of the night, people can be as vulnerable as a sick baby. And there are others who are happy to pick over their bones.

“Clare’s almost finished,” said Jenny. “She’s falling asleep. Look.”

I was distracted now by all the free stuff that came with the knives. I was starting to change my mind. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad deal after all. If you bought the knives, you got a whole battery of kitchen gadgets as well.

“Hey,” I said. “You get a wall-mounted can opener as well.”

At that moment, Clare vomited all over her mother. Half an hour’s work was now all over the sofa.