It was late when he finally stood once more outside the front door; the house was divided in four bed-sits, the two upstairs sharing a bathroom but luckily the downstairs had proved big enough for the landlord to include a tiny bathroom in each. It also gave him the excuse to charge more but Becca tired and tearful was in no mood to quibble after an exhausting day of inspecting and discarding smaller and less salubrious places. He reached in his pocket for the key but at that moment the door opened and one of the monosyllabic neighbours from upstairs held the door for him and grunted some kind of observation. "Ta mate!" he replied He reckoned on that covering a multitude of possible questions. He opened the door to their room but it was quiet and dark. At first he thought she too had left to cool off but as he eyes became accustomed to the gloom he could see the shape of her body under the covers of their bed. "Becca?" he whispered, she didn't reply but her body moved slightly indicating that she was still awake. He undressed in the dark and climbed in beside her, her body was warm and he curled close to it, thawing from his sojourn outside. "Becca? I'm sorry" he whispered again, he sat up looking down at her, he tucked a loose strand of hair away from her face behind her ear, his fingers strayed back to her face and gently traced the line from cheek to jaw. She abandoned any further pretence at sleep, "I'm sorry too, I don't know why I said those things I didn't mean any of them!" He shuddered inwardly at some of the more cutting, hurtful things she'd flung at him during the course of the row that had sprung from nowhere. "I just feel so...so ...so angry all the time" "I know" he shushed her, "It's difficult here but it won't be forever" The anger returned "There you go again, living in cloud cuckoo land, don't you realise this is as good as it's going to get for a long while" Irritated she threw off his hand and rolled away her back, prickly as a hedgehog, facing him. Slowly he lay back, no matter what he said at the moment, even if he apologised straight away for whatever misdemeanour, imagined or real it made no difference, her resentment simmered too deep for that. He closed his eyes but realised he too was too wound up to sleep. Glaring at Becca's recumbent back, he got up and felt his way over to what passed for a kitchen, he flicked the switch on the kettle and listened to it begin to boil. Coffee, he thought, what he needed was beer and lots of it. He hadn't felt the need to drink so much since last New Years Eve even if getting hammered hadn't solved the problem then. At last he flicked the light on over the worktop, measured a stingy amount of coffee into a cup and looked in the fridge. He poured the last of the milk into the cup and watched as it curdled, he let his breath out in a sigh, could life get any worse? He dumped the curdled mess into the sink and left the empty cup on the side amidst a pile of dirty dishes. To him that signalled Becca's descent into depression, normally she'd have had everything in the kitchen spotless no matter where they where but lately she hadn't been bothered about keeping the flat clean or tidy. He looked around in the half light at the mess. Checking she was still sleeping he ran water in the sink, added washing up liquid and tackled the pile of dishes. When he'd finished he tidied around as best he could in the gloom without waking her. He collapsed on the sofa and sighed, it was nearly one. He needed to be up for school in six hours and though exhausted he couldn't sleep, his mind still active, churning over the row and his reception when he returned. True, he shouldn't have gone but what else was there left to do when she wouldn't listen to reason, just wouldn't listen.
