Eight years old, and she took the answer and put it away and went to sleep, because that is what we had trained her to do with that answer.
Some nights he did not come home at all.
We’re short-staffed, love. Don’t wait up.
And whenever he finally got into bed he looked so wrecked that I swallowed every single thing I had been saving up all week.
Once I woke at about three and he was sitting on the edge of the mattress with his back to me, and his shoulders were going.
I said: Soren?
He wiped his face before he turned round. I remember the sound of it, his palm on his face, before I saw anything.
He said: rough night. Go back to sleep.
And I did.
I want that on the page early, because everything else in this is built on it. I said his name once, I got four words back, and I went to sleep.
My name is Wynne and I am thirty-nine and I teach year four at a primary school about a mile from our house.
I mention the job because it matters. I spend my entire working life watching eight-year-olds and knowing within four seconds which of them has had a bad morning.
I am extremely good at it. It is the thing I am best at.
And I could not do it in my own bedroom, at three in the morning, with a man I have known for fourteen years sitting two feet away with his back to me.
