It makes me sick, he shouts, smashes something with more force than is necessary into the overflowing sink. She sits there, an ocean of calm, clicking needles.

Perhaps you need help, she suggests in a voice which leaves me cold, a dribble of cheap ice-cream onto hot, sandy toes. Click clack click. Even the budgie feels it. Distressed, he flings himself against the side of his cage with a flutter of feathers, looks down at me sadly. He makes me think of a lonely traveller trecking miles in enveloping, misty rain to throw himself from a precipice, only to find himself landing on a bed of clay a few metres down. I talk to him about tropical sunsets and Amazon rainforests, and eventually he is coaxed back onto his perch, from where he shivers down at me miserably.

Well, maybe I do! And maybe YOU need to find yourself someone else!
Click clack click, and a snort of derision.

I failed to escape in time tonight, and as I’m there, can I really get up and leave, and would it not be rude, what is the ettiquette for this? I think it could be as cleanly and politely resolved as lobster eating is with the correct guide.

This is vaguely embarrassing and kind of funny, not just the words (…but when you fell in love with me, I knitted then and you didn’t mind!) but the tone also, that of petulant school kids. Half-crazed, and perhaps this is how mad people sound, arguing and threatening to leave over an innocent one eighth of a burnt sienna scarf.

There is a knock at the door. I think of the knocker, and did whoever is at the door make out through the darkness and the drizzle the rather large, rather dead, rather skeletal spider? For at least a month it has been trapped there. I hope it hangs on till Halloween. I open the it gladly. There stands a tall, dark, well-dressed stranger. The words my saviour are on my lips as he introduces himself. I fear he has come to tell us very politely with a sideways cringe of pity to turn down the noise, and by noise he will mean crazy shouting. I am truly surprised when he explains about his lack of heated water. He lives at number 12. I am suddenly very aware of my pyjamas. My father bounds over aggressively. In his head must flick a switch, for once he reaches the stranger he is somehow normal, albeit a little strained. And perhaps he sounds a little too enthusiastic to be expressing concern over hot water.

Do I imagine it, or does the tall, dark, well-dressed stranger throw me a meaningful look before he vanishes off into the night?

(I imagine it.)

We shall NEVER be like that, this said whilst holding my face in large hands, long fingers stroking the hair fallen out of place, words undoubtedly intended as solace.

I bet they said that too, back in the day.