The only person who knows our number is a scammer who rings up with concern for malicious activity, detected at our address.  I checked the curtains but the curtains are still closed. No, no, he says, he is from the Technical Department of Windows. Like Apple. It's computers. He's been so long out there on the great telephonic highways that he doesn't realise nothing is technical. Everything is windows. The jig is up.

Well look, I tell him, my mother is dying. The sprouts are boiling over. Do something useful with your brief life! Just leave me alone.

He rings off, vanishing back down the deserted landline. I hang up and pick up again, checking the tone. I need a script for next time. Dial hard, doughty brigand. Don't forget to call home.

a dad comes running down Irvine with his girl on a trolley, careening towards the corner: WHICH WAY? WHICH WAY? he screams and she screams THAT WAY, flinging her arm out into the blurry world where I am behind a window unlatching you with one finger, bringing you to the other shoulder and adjusting the pillow. now the girl is pelting up Piddington in gumboots that come to her knees, then she's gone. you make small skittering noises and I rub your back firmly. lorikeets witter around the oak's lower branches, and a lone dog with wild blond fur gallops down Irvine, across Piddington and up Kerferd, glancing back as it rounds the bend. the girl runs down Piddington, pauses and looks up Irvine, then takes off down Irvine. I bare my breast. you pitch your body in and latch yourself. it's starting to rain. the dog is running up Irvine, towing the girl on the trolley. trees are emptying their forms, yellow expanding as a screen.

I'm surprised that I really like it. I'm surprised that I want to lie next to him, that I want to wake up in the morning, and that war doesn't bother me. I can't remember any evidence that my choices have led to war. In fact I've moved further away from war. There's no one I would kill. There's nothing that makes me feel I need to kill. I've moved to a place where I'm happy, and other people are happy. When my nipples hurt I think of him eating and the milk comes. My husband has finally got the right fittings for his barbecue.