Instead of turning out the lamp and lying back to touch him, she sat him up, his body almost lifeless, and wrapped herself around him from behind. She scooped up the quilt and pulled it tight over their shoulders.

He hadn’t expected this, there wasn’t something he didn’t need to say. He was forty eight and she was forty six and everything had gone to plan, except for this. They had wanted three, two boys and a girl, but they had never come. He exhaled heavily and she thought he would turn around and gently reach inside her.

Instead he kept quite still feeling her breath on his neck, peering down at her fingers that were still slender but had become wrinkled over time.

* * *

He swallowed hard and licked away the wet salty tears that had reached his lips. ‘Is it time to buy a cat?’ he asked, his voice tender yet playful, in an attempt to break the silence that held them apart. She puffed a laugh from her nose that was quickly followed by a rush of sobs. He turned to her now and held her face against his.

‘We could get a dog, if you prefer?’ he said, once the sobbing had subsided. She held him closer now and smiled through her pain.

‘Actually’ she said, ‘I’d prefer an allotment in the park, with chickens’.

He smiled. ‘There might be a bit of a waiting list’ he said sighing, a look of anguish stealing over his face, ‘do you think you can wait?’ At this they fell about laughing, a laughter that continued for the rest of the evening, only marred, now and again, by a tear.

Natalie Basnett lives by this park in East Manchester and often wanders around it, making up stories as she goes.

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