How long can a person sit, staring at a bowl of cornflakes? Really, I have no idea. I was dizzy with hunger, but it was impossible to eat. It was as if someone had rolled a boulder into the base of my throat. A cup of grey-skinned tea stood untouched on the table.
I just looked up and you were there. Your hands folded gently on the tablecloth. Your fingers laced together. Your fingernails like almonds. Your left thumb crooked with arthritis. Your bruised red skin, like the day you were born, slack on your bones. I looked at your coarse, chapped hands, and saw the whole of your long, hard life, and wanted to weep. You really should have looked after your hands.

You were wearing a cardigan I’d not seen before. It was the colour of sea-shells, with a row of pearls for buttons, all of them hanging loose from their threads like milk teeth.
I thought I would not be able to look at your face, but I did. And I was amazed. Maybe the heat of the kitchen had ironed out all your creases, but you looked like you did when you were a young girl. Nothing had changed.

You clicked your tongue against the roof of your mouth and sucked your lips. Look at you, you scolded. Eating like a baby in the middle of the afternoon. Look at the state of your hand. Shame on you.

I gazed in disgust at the soggy mess in my bowl. When I looked up again you had gone.

So. I am married to a ghost.

I woke in the middle of the night with my head full of water. I had forgotten how to sleep. For no reason, I came downstairs. You were sat at the dining table looking out of the window into the garden, your back to me. I caught my breath, my fingers fumbling for the solid wood of the door frame. Your ankles were crossed and I could see how swollen they were, how you’d had to squeeze your feet into your shoes.
You turned round sharply and smiled. You were wearing the seashell cardigan.
Take a look at yourself Harry, you said. You’re letting yourself go. You need to get out more. Keep your mind active. Eat something.

And then you began to melt into the room.
Please don’t go, I whispered, but you went ahead and dissolved before my eyes.

You leave behind a smell of flowers. Do you know that? Lily of the valley, lavender, rose, geranium, orange blossom, magnolia. Their names are on your bottles in the bathroom.
I walked through every single room in the house with my eyes closed so that I could smell you. Like a blind man, I traced the walls with the fingers of my left hand, the other still sore and blistered, and moved through each room in turn, up the stairs, breathing in all your flowers. When I made it to the bedroom, I collapsed on the edge of the bed. Our bed. I turned my palms to face me, examining them (for what?), and then pulled back the covers. Your nightdress lay on the bottom sheet, moulded into the folds of your body. I buried my face in its soft cotton, breathing in a different smell this time, something warm, nesty. Freshly dug clay. I know our daughter will come soon and tell me in that slightly raised voice of hers that it’s time to get rid of your clothes. But not yet. I held your nightdress to my face and began to cry.

I have forgotten where I am.

Maybe I am losing my mind.

I open my eyes and realise the train has come to a halt in a tunnel. The lights in the carriage flicker for an instant. There is a crackle and a faint voice from a speaker on the roof.

‘What did he say?’

The girl has her headphones in her ears, her eyes closed.
With my good hand, I pat the package on the seat beside me, the purpose of my foray into the world. For the first time in weeks, months, I feel a faint spark of something that could almost be called excitement.

I didn’t do it again. I didn’t light the gas and try to burn myself again. I know. It was a stupid thing to do. But I did start to have accidents. Ah yes, accidents, I hear you say, rolling your eyes to the sky. Really, they were. I pulled a hot shelf out of the oven with my bare hands. I left a pan handle hanging over a burning ring on the hob and then picked it up. I brushed my arm against the oven door. And then I did it again. And again. And there would be heat and sometimes, if I was lucky, there would be something else. Look, I’ve built up a rather interesting collection of welts and scars, don’t you think?

Sorry, I shouldn’t joke. I know. It’s not funny.

What on earth are you doing to yourself? This has got to stop, you said. And the house is a disgrace. We never once went to bed with washing-up left in the sink.

You were sat on the dirty laundry basket watching me brush my teeth. When we were first married, we would sit side by side on the edge of the bath and brush our teeth together, seeing who could hold out the longest before spitting. I would tickle your ribs and pull stupid faces until you cracked and you’d get up laughing, white foam running down your chin. This time you’d got me. I had toothpaste foaming out of my mouth and couldn’t explain how all of this had happened.

I’m ashamed of you Harry, you said. I didn’t think you would let me down like this.
I wanted us to stay like that all night, in the bathroom, you sitting on the laundry basket, me standing with one hand on the basin, a slight ache in the small of my back. I wanted to say I’m sorry, love. You’re right. I haven’t been myself lately. But I had a mouth full of swelling foam and even though I knew that if I turned round to spit into the basin you’d do your disappearing act, I thought that if I got rid of the foam, I could say something, I could explain. I was terrified you’d be so angry with me that you’d stay away on purpose, I just wanted to explain, tell you what it had been like. So I turned, spat and spun round again as fast as someone of my age possibly could. Of course, you’d gone.

But.

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