She knows Jack's not sleeping.
She knows he's not sleeping, but he's pretending to, and when she slides out from under the covers he doesn't move.
There's no point trying to be quiet as she wanders out to the kitchen for a glass of water. Jack's not sleeping, anyway.
The night-dark window shows her face, pale and ghostly in the glass, blonde curls flattened from the pillow. She turns away and goes into the living room.
The whiskey glass is where she knew it would be, neatly on the liquor cabinet. She picks it up and sniffs. The faint scent of fresh scotch. She puts it back.
Jack doesn't think she knows that there's an extra picture shoved up the back of the photos arranged on the bookshelf, behind the ones that show her smiling in her wedding dress. She looks at those pictures for a minute, at herself so happy, at Jack. Can you tell?
Even now, knowing, she can't tell.
She reaches through and feels around until she touches the flat frame of the picture she's after, laid face down. Taking it out, she tilts it to the light, not that she needs to. She knows this picture by heart, she knows it as well as her husband does.
A beautiful young woman, shining dark hair ruffled out of its bob by a breeze, laughing and laughing at the camera, at the man holding the camera. Laughing and laughing.
She puts the picture back carefully, just as it was, and takes her empty water glass to the kitchen. As she puts it on the drainer she catches sight of herself in the window again. She looks like a ghost. She looks like a ghost, but she's not a ghost.
She's just Not Claire.
She goes back to bed, where her husband pretends to sleep so she won't talk to him, so he won't have to talk to her.
She lies down next to him. Neither of them move toward the other.
