Free Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall

picks out all the coffee creams and lines them up on the arm of the sofa. He starts eating them one by one, folding the papers neatly and throwing them into the wastepaper bin. Not one of them misses.
    I snatch a handful of sweets irritably. I can’t bear to watch his neatness, his precision. I start to stuff the sweets in my mouth, not waiting to finish one before starting the next.
    “You’ll have to face them tomorrow,” he says mildly. “You can’t hide for ever.”
    I shrug. “Don’t worry. I’ll be gone before you get up.”
    We have nothing to say to each other. I know he won’t push me too far. Like, “Is it to do with the baby?” He won’t be able to ask me that, because he knows I can’t answer.
    “I’ll get to bed, then,” he says. He stands up in his pink dressing gown and coughs again. It doesn’t sound good. “Help yourself if you want to make a drink. Only—”
    “Yes?”
    “Try to be quiet. Suzy needs a good sleep.”
    “By the way,” I say, “the porch door is unlocked.”
    He stops at the door, about to say something, but changes his mind. I pick up the remote control and put on BBC2. It’s the Open University. They’re having a discussion on cloning.
    “Sleep well,” I say. “You can count babies to help you nod off.”
    He’s gone. I only said that because I knew he wouldn’t hear it.
    I listen to an earnest woman with glasses on a chain round her neck, and a younger man wearing a white coat with a pager in the pocket. Scientist or doctor? I wonder. They talk with great conviction, but they don’t agree. I’m beginning to warm up. My eyes are suddenly heavy and aching. I huddle down into the chair, lean my head on the cushion and try to concentrate on cloning.

    I wake with a jerk, and my neck cracks with the movement. The telly is still on, but I can’t work out what they’re talking about. The faces are blurred, the words incomprehensible.
    I was dreaming about babies all over the place—in beds, on chairs, in prams. There is nowhere to sit because everywhere is full of babies. They are gurgling, sleeping, screaming. In the second before I wake, I realize that I am one of them, and open mymouth to scream, to prove it. I wake up at that precise moment, feeling stiff and ill.
    I look at my watch. It’s 5:30. Time to go home, before anyone guesses where I am.
    A group of suited men on the television are talking in a foreign language. I leaf rapidly through the Radio Times, wanting to know what it is. Russian. No wonder I can’t understand them.
    I turn off the television and get up. My legs are very stiff and I nearly fall over, my right foot tingling with pins and needles. I jump up and down on it until it starts to work again.
    When I turn the light off, I can still see—it’s no longer dark outside. Going into the hall, I move very carefully so that I don’t wake anyone, but just before I open the front door I hear a movement behind me. I turn round, expecting Jake, and find myself confronting Suzy.
    “Oh,” I say in alarm and put my hand over my mouth.
    She looks strangely unfocused. “Kitty,” she says. “What are you doing here?”
    “Well,” I say, and I haven’t a thought in my head. “I was just passing …”
    She stares, but her intense concentration is not directed at me, but on some internal dilemma. I’ve never seen her before in nightclothes, her face pale without makeup, her hair greasy and ragged.
    “Oh—” she groans suddenly and races away into the kitchen.
    As I unlock the front door, I can hear her retching into the sink. I shut the door behind me, trying not to hear her being sick. I know about this—being sick all day. She doesn’t have a tummy upset, she’s pregnant. I recognize the look.
    My legs are heavy, as if I’m trying to run in water, and it feels as if they’re not moving at all. I’m not sure I can manage to get home.
    I HESITATE OUTSIDE MY flat door, uncertain where to go. Home or to James? Where would Adrian