To your left your friend Mary pours herself another glass of red. To your right your husband James chops chives on a stained plastic board. Mary laughs at James’s joke. She laughs loudly.

The door in front of you, beyond the cluttered table, is open. It is dark outside. The flowers in the aged polystyrene trough are lit by the kitchen globe. They are impatiens, red, drooping from scraggly stems. A snail climbs towards the flowers up the side of the trough. The flowers are wet. It was raining earlier, but the rain has stopped now. The wooden fence is streaked with water and covered by a nest of dormant branches, some sort of vine. You don’t know what the vine is called, but sometimes you think you should prune it. You can’t get to the clothesline any more, the vine has grown so dense. But you never do prune the vine. Nor do you sweep up the leaves on the path. They are matted and rotting against the concrete. That’s where the snails live.