There’s a white rope coiled up and hanging above the stable door. It’s attached somewhere through a hole in the ceiling. The man is still lying unconscious in the hay. She nudges him with her foot. Nothing. But he could be bluffing. She can’t reach the rope. She looks round the stable floor for something to stand on, but it’s pretty dark. Almost as if horses didn’t like to read. She finds a bucket but it’s still too small, and so she finds two more and builds a little pyramid and climbs on top of it and grabs the rope, and uncoils it, and pulls it down, and goes to the man to bind his arms and feet. And as she feels a little resistance in the rope she hears a loud peal from the bell above, which of course she had just accidentally rung. Shit, she says, as she realises that it’s all over, and that she will not have time to go to Tesco to buy strawberry laces after all.

I went back to 1996 yesterday

using a time machine I bought on eBay.

And when I got there I was seven again, and not thirty-three

and you woke me up and made me toast with peanut butter.

Later we went to the shops.

I bought my first CD and we stopped off at pizza hut for lunch.

After we got home we went out to look for conkers in the woods

and in the evening we watched a television show about airports.

I ate an entire packet of frankfurter sausages tonight. I know what you’re thinking. How many is that! Well, it’s six. Six frankfurter sausages. But I only meant to have three.

They were Knacks actually. The sort we used to get at Flunch. I bought them at the supermarché on my way home from the rain. There was no queue. I guess no one else needed sausages today.

I ate one when I got home. As a snack. And then I put the oven on, and put in some chips, which I also got from the supermarket. But, plot twist, I actually didn’t put it on, I forgot, and I just left the chips in the cold oven gently defrosting. And then I noticed and turned it on. You’d have laughed at me. You wouldn’t have forgotten to turn the oven on.

And when the chips were nearly done I fried two eggs in the same pan, and then I put the Knacks in and I tossed them in the oil, till they were good and hot and a little bit crispy. And then I put some emmental on the chips and a bit of salt and pepper and ate the lot.

This was a couple of hours ago and just now I got peckish. And I went to grab another sausage, but it was the last one. Yes I know what you’re thinking, weren’t there six? And you’re right. I don’t remember eating the other one. To be honest I’m sort of hoping you ate it. And that you’re still here, somewhere, maybe hiding in one of my cupboards, chomping on low-quality processed meat.

You tripped on a plank of wood on your way from the tube, you said. There was thick blood running down your cheek from just above your eye and the geese were arguing about something by the pond. I reached to wipe the dribble of red before it dripped onto your extremely luxurious cream-coloured cashmere jumper that you said you’ll never wash. You were reading the news, you said. What a shit show, you’d thought. And you weren’t paying attention and you tumbled head first into an upturned nail. But you came anyway, because you really wanted to see me.

You told me you were going to Switzerland. But I saw you in Sainsbury’s. Buying radishes.

You don’t usually eat radishes, so I thought, what on Earth is going on?

And I hid behind a stack of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges. They were discounted so I grabbed two and put them in my basket. I will eat them later, probably slowly while seething about how you lied to me, and thumbing through all my angry thoughts and plans to get you back, but getting them all chocolatey and orangey because my fingers will be too hot and too slow.

I peeked out and saw you taking the thin plastic bag filled with clean juicy radishes off the weighing scale. You put on a little barcode and walked towards my aisle.

And as you came a bit closer I realised that it wasn’t you at all, just someone who looked like you. You were probably in Switzerland, after all.

The dishwasher gave a little growl and a grunt, and then beeped three times.

She’d had to run it again. Last time the dishes had come out all dirty.

“Oh no, they’re all dirty!” she’d said. And then she’d started to turn her head to see his response but had stopped herself as she’d remembered that she was alone. It would have come across as a sort of a strange twitch had anyone been there to look. And she’d sighed and slowly pulled out a plate and had angled it about in the light to see the extent of the muck, and then had pulled out a bowl that had turned itself the right way up and had filled with sad grey water, which she had poured slowly into the sink saying, “Oh…” with a wrinkled nose. And she had rifled through the cutlery as if looking for some mischevious spirit to blame. But there had been none, so she’d reached past the knives and forks and spoons and removed the filter and bashed it on the side of the bin and filled up the salt and set it running again.

And now it was 11:39pm and the dishwasher had gone vrrrrrpkhhhts and then beeped three times. And she couldn’t face getting up to check if the dirt was gone.

Elena filled up the worn, tired, creaking sneakers with soft loamy soil. The toes were padded with pebbles from the yard and bits of fine gravel that she’d scooped out of the fish tank in the kitchen. Sarah didn’t mind. Sarah was a fish.

The laces were loose. All but one of the ends had lost their little plastic sheaths, and were fraying and beginning to unravel. She gently tied up the left shoe, so that a little of the soil squeezed out of the top, but most of it compacted itself safely and securely inside, and then she did the same with the right shoe. She pulled the tongues up a little and prodded into the opening of each foot a few little seeds. And then she covered them up with the last of the loam and sprinkled on some river water, and left him by the bank to grow back.

On Tuesday I was so sick that I vomited.

Just a little bit of sick but a cascade of thundering wretches nonetheless.

I guess I’d already sent my meal southwards. I thought I’d eaten a lot, but, thinking about it, it had been a while.

There was something in the water, I think.

Grapes, probably. Old grapes that had been trodden on and left weeping until they liquefied.

Okay.

Wine.

Whine.

It’s Saturday and my intercostal muscles still ache.

Everything aches. And you’re not here.

Or, you’re not here, and everything aches.

I can’t tell.

A squirrel lost her footing.

It was three in the afternoon and it had been a long day.

Scurrying from branch to branch. Tea with Esther. Hang the washing out. Pick the kids up from school. See the dentist about that damn tooth. And those bloody nuts won’t bury themselves.

What she needed, Esther said, was a spa day.

And Esther was right.

But the squirrel lost her footing while rushing to pick up the cake for Cheryl’s birthday before the shop closed.

And she fell off a tall branch, hit her head on a conker, and tumbled straight under the tyre of a Citroen C3 Picasso.

Yesterday I was chatting to a man at the bus stop.

He wore brown leather shoes and a short sleeved shirt. He was eating a salad with a wooden fork from Pret. I didn’t know the fork was from Pret but I guessed so. Pret wasn’t far away.

The forks from Pret are not very practical, really, because the prongs are so small. I’d been looking at him for a while thinking this. The prongs are really small.

I think he noticed me looking. I think there is a way of eating a salad when you know no one’s watching, and there is a way of eating a salad when you’re being watched, and I could sense a real change in the air.

“These little forks eh.” I said, because I knew he knew I was watching and I thought it would be weird if I didn’t say anything.

He was perching on one of the little red seats that aren’t really for sitting on at all.

“The prongs are so small.”

He looked up from his salad and said, “Hm?”

And then I said thank you and left.