The floor presses into my knees, a dull ache that mirrors the one in my lower back from sleeping on the sofa for the last 15 nights. Her grunt of effort is a sharp, percussive sound in the quiet living room. ‘Just five more,’ I say, my voice trying for a cheerfulness I haven’t genuinely felt in months. Her eyes, squeezed shut against the strain of the leg lift, don’t open. One… two… the muscles in her thigh tremble violently. She’s fighting. We’re fighting. But sometimes, in the silence between the numbers, I can’t tell what we’re fighting for anymore, or who we’re fighting against.
After, when she’s settled on the couch with a fortress of pillows, the phone rings. It’s the school. ‘Mr. Davies, just confirming you’re picking Mason up today?’ The secretary’s voice is polite, but there’s an edge. I’m late again. It’s the third time in 15 days. ‘Yes, I’m on my way now,’ I lie, looking at the clock. It will take me at least 25 minutes. I feel a hot flush of shame, followed immediately by a surge of white-hot resentment that has no target, so it just ricochets around inside my skull, denting everything. I love my wife. I love my son. But I despise this choreography. This exhausting, endless dance dictated by a single moment of













































