Safe.
I stare at the small fold of wool.
Something loosens behind my ribs.
“Well,” I say. “That’s new.”
The house settles around us.
I unpack without thinking much. Clothes upstairs. Wash bag in the bathroom. Phone charger by the bed.
In the bottom of my bag, wrapped in a T-shirt, is the frame.
I take it out carefully.
Plain black. Nothing showy.
I don’t unwrap it. Not yet.
I just stand with it in my hands for a moment, then set it face down on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.
That is enough.
For now.
Downstairs, I make pasta because I don’t really care what I’ll have for dinner.
I eat at the island.
Heath rustles in the beanie.
My phone stays beside my plate.
Philip doesn’t message.
Which is fine.
Obviously.
People are allowed to have evenings.
People in Toronto are also five hours behind, probably still working, probably having actual plans with actual Canadians who know where to buy normal-priced sandwiches.
I eat another mouthful.
It tastes like cardboard.
At half nine, I take a photo of Heath’s cage because he has arranged the wood shavings into a shape that looks vaguely like modern art.
I do not send it.
At ten, I go outside and stand on the patio.
The sea is a dark, moving sound beyond the garden. The air is cool against my skin, carrying that damp edge Whitstable gets at night. Somewhere down the front, people are laughing. A seagull shrieks like it has been personally wronged.
I look towards the place where one of them nearly traumatised Heath into an early grave.
And I think of Philip saying the wellness retreat has suffered a minor predatory interruption.
