Schedule Fourteen

Aled’s car came into the yard at four minutes to eight on Thursday, and Esther, at the kitchen window with the blind up to the second slat, watched him get out of it with one cup in his hand and a second on the roof.

He locked the car. He took the second cup off the roof and carried it to the drain by the yard wall, and tipped it out, steadily, the whole of it, and stood a moment looking at the grating as if something might come back up. Then he dropped the cup in the bin by the gate she was not allowed to use, and came up the outside stair.

Thursday. The seventh Thursday of the year. She had not meant to be at the window. She had been at the window since twenty to.

“Morning,” he said, in the doorway.

“Morning.”

He looked at the…