June 2017
The baby is starting to grumble. Kim sits still in her chair and holds her breath. It’s taken her all night to get him to sleep. It’s Friday, a sultry midsummer’s night, and normally she’d be out with friends at this time. Eleven o’clock: she’d be at the bar getting in the last round for the road. But tonight she’s in joggers and a T-shirt, her dark hair tied up in a bun, contacts out, glasses on and a glass of lukewarm wine on the coffee table that she poured herself earlier and hasn’t had a chance to drink.
She clicks the volume down on the TV using the remote and listens again.
There it is, the very early outposts of crying, a kind of dry, ominous chirruping…
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