She moves around the house on slow feet, her footsteps padding softly above me as I lie on my unmade bed of unwashed sheets, listening. She knows, as she always knows, that I am listening to her and it is early morning.

The fog has not risen. The traffic crawls outside. There is a red bus, I can see the top of it, outside the window. If I cared to look more closely I could see the faces of people in the bus and, with luck, my own reflection, or at least the reflection of my white hair, my one distinction. The mail has not yet arrived. There will be nothing for me, but still I wait. Life is nothing without expectation. I am always first to pick up the letters when they drop through the door. The milk bottles, two days old, are in the kitchen unwashed and she knows this, too, because she has not yet come.