The Quiet House – Part 1: The Empty Room

The car had barely turned the corner when the house went silent.

Anita stood in the kitchen with a tea towel in her hands. Robert stood in the doorway, jingling the car keys he no longer needed. For twenty years there had been a school run, a football kit, a closed bedroom door, a bathroom queue. Now there was only the clock on the wall and the soft tick of the fridge.

"Well," said Robert.

"Well," said Anita.

"It's very quiet."

"It's very tidy." She laughed, and the laugh turned a little wet. He crossed the room and put his arms around her, and they stood like that for a long moment in the afternoon light, forty-six and forty-nine, a couple who had been parents for so long that they had to remember how to be anything else.

"I miss him already," she said.

"I know. Me too."

"But I keep thinking..." She hesitated against his shoulder. "I keep thinking we could eat dinner at ten at night if we wanted. Walk around in our dressing gowns. Not lock the bedroom door."

Robert pulled back and looked at her. "Are you propositioning me in the kitchen?"

"I might be."

"I thought it was only the cat who got that kind of attention."

She swatted him with the tea towel. He caught her wrist, gently, and kissed it. The cat looked on from the windowsill, deeply unimpressed.

"Anita," he said. "Do you want to go upstairs?"

"Yes," she said. "In the middle of the afternoon. With the door open."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Door Open.