day ahead, and if she just went back to bed, she ran the risk of waking Rob. Even if he
didn’t wake, she would probably just lie there, listening to him snoring and trying to remember a time when it had felt good to lie beside him, back when he could have been
roused for more than just an argument.
Now even the thought of the good nights made her tense, wondering if there was ever
any love there, any purpose beyond putting one in the back of the net and getting his son
and heir. She felt her shoulder muscles tighten, pulling spider silk bands of pain across her
chest and down her arms. Even if she did try to go back to sleep now, she would need a
couple of ibuprofen tablets to relax her before she could nod off.
Trying to shake the tension away, she closed her eyes, rolled her neck and rubbed at her
solar plexus, but that just set the drainer creaking again. She had to sit still or move on.
Hooking the blinds aside, she let the moonlight play across the kitchen floor, flashing across
the silvery trails left by the slugs. Rob was supposed to have put down more poison, to
have dealt with the slimy little shits, but here they were again, oozing out from god knows
where. Watching their aimless meanderings, she imagined that each one was a doubt
about their marriage, a worry about their future. Those were regularly exterminated too,
drowned in beer traps or poisoned with clarity and sunlight, but they always slipped back
in, unnoticed, until the house was full of them, covered with an invisible film of dirt and
rot, and the whole cycle started over.
She lowered herself to the floor, grabbed a spatula from the tool rack and made her way
to the back door. She unlocked it, freezing for a moment when the deadbolt clicked loudly
in the echoing kitchen, waiting for a noise from Lou, but the silence crashed back in and
she slowly opened the door, letting the cold night into the house.
As she did, she felt the urge to run down the garden, to jump the back fence and to take
off across the darkness. Forcing the impulse back down, she worked her way across the
kitchen, using the spatula to scoop the slugs from the floor and flicking them out into the
garden with a savage joy that took her by surprise; she was supposed to be a good little
vegetarian, for Christ’s sake.
Her next victim was still clinging to the moonscape of burnt and pitted plastic, and it
seemed surprised to see her face looming up before it like a new sun. For her part, Jane
was just as surprised to see the slug there and she flung the spatula through the open door,
a scream welling within her chest. She fought it, hard, bit it back down, but something