Futile though it is to do so, I find myself wondering what happens in houses when the people aren't around. I suppose they become theatres where the sights and sounds of inside and outside play to empty seats. Half an hour ago I lay on the sofa with my eyes closed and tried to pretend that I wasn't here. My breathing slowed so that I couldn't hear it, or my heart, and I only knew I was alive by the cooling sensation of air being drawn into me and by the things I could hear - the clicky hum of the freezer; a barking dog; a jet's engines labouring on the track out of Heathrow; cops and robbers sirens. There was also the awareness behind shut-tight eyelids of burnt orange. Opening my eyes, there was no movement in the house but through the window the silent swish of the upper branches of a leylandii, like seaweed moving underwater. Also, grey clouds skudding and another plane, or maybe the same one.
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A bear pit in the office again last night. Ale-soaked boorishness, ruddy-faced, withering sarcasm and legitimate complaints about time-keeping ridden over and trivialised. In short, a masterclass in bullying. Something ought to be done, but I don't suppose it will be, and the resentments will continue and deepen. Gloom. We are too small a unit now - and too overloaded with tasks - for there to be gaping, unhealed wounds, yet they are opening - rapidly. How I wish that the offending party would show some sign that there is one spark within him of regret - even that temporary, until-the-next-time sort of regret.
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