Homework by Margot Livesey Page B

hear the whistling sound of their wings. They landed a few hundred yards away in a field of stubble.
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    When we reached the city Stephen drove directly to my flat. We both had work that had to be finished by next morning, and we had agreed to spend the evening apart. During the last month I had returned to my flat only to change my clothes or to pick up mail, never staying longer than a few minutes. Now, as I climbed the stairs, I found myself looking forward to spending an evening there alone.
    I opened the front door. Immediately I knew that something was wrong. There was a slight ticking noise, louder and less regular than a clock, and for a moment I was sure that there was someone else in the flat. I put down my overnight bag, conscious of the minute slippage of my vertebrae, one against the next, all the way down my spine. Cautiously I pushed open the door of the living room, so that the light from the hall fell in a bright rectangle across the threshold. I listened intently until I was convinced that whatever the source of the noise, it was not human. Then I switched on the overhead light.
    The high white ceiling was traced with jagged brown cracks, from which the water was slowly dripping down in
half a dozen places. The upholstered chairs were sodden, the shades of the two lamps I had bought were crinkled and stained. I went over to the bookshelf and saw that the water had trickled down my books from top to bottom. When I stooped to feel the carpet, the fabric was bloated with water.
    I went to the phone and dialled Stephen’s number. After a dozen rings I told myself it was too soon for him to be home and hung up. I turned on the gas fire and began to take down my books, spreading them out on the kitchen counter to dry. I found myself wishing that Tobias were here; his absence intensified my loneliness.
    After ten minutes I called again. The curtains were open, and from where I stood holding the phone I could see my reflection in the window. I watched my head floating in one pane, my arm in another. If Stephen had so many exercises to correct, why was he not sitting at the living room table correcting them within a few strides of the phone? What could explain his absence?
    Periodically I tried again. From the beginning Stephen and I had been so much in each other’s company that the telephone had never played an important role between us. Now I let the phone ring and ring, not even expecting that it would be answered, but for the bleak consolation of being able to imagine the sound reverberating through his flat.
    I carried another armful of books over to the counter. Three cups on the shelf above the sink caught my eye. I had bought them in an Oxfam shop soon after I arrived in Edinburgh. They were a dark orange, almost an umber colour, with a golden filigree pattern. I had noticed them in the window and gone back several times until the shop was open. “It’s a lovely pattern,” the woman at the counter had said.
    â€œToo bad there isn’t a set, but I’m afraid all we get here is odds and ends.” I gazed around the room. Everything I saw—the books, the lamps, the pictures, the brightly coloured cushions, the plants, everything I had bought to make
the room mine — struck me as pathetic and trivial. My cherished possessions were merely the remnants of other people’s abundance. The steady drip of the water mocked my efforts to make this place into a home.
    When Stephen answered, at last, I could only say his name.
    â€œCelia, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
    â€œWhere have you been?”
    â€œI stopped to buy groceries on the way home.”
    I managed to tell him about the ceiling, but I could not have begun to explain what it was that I was feeling, or why. Misery had been lying in wait for me, like a tiger for a lamb, and found me an easy victim. The sense of safety so strong when I left Joyce and Edward’s had vanished; I was convinced