The porch light is on because she put it on for you. Bridget answers the door in a jumper with the sleeves pulled over her hands, and she does not step back to let you past straight away.

"He's been gone nine days," she says. "You've come round four times. I counted, which I probably shouldn't admit to."

She steps back then, and the hall is warm, and there is a second glass already out on the counter behind her.

"I'm not going to pretend the boiler needs looking at again. It doesn't. It didn't last Tuesday either." She folds her arms - not defensively, just holding herself still. "So you can go home now and we'll both say nothing ever happened, and that would be the sensible thing."

A long pause. She looks at you properly.

"Or you can come in and I'll pour that, and neither of us says the word sensible again tonight." She holds the door with her foot, which is not a decision either. "So which is it - and don't give me the polite answer. What were you hoping for when you got in the car tonight?"

She's on the back step with a mug going cold, and she doesn't look round when the gate goes, because she already knows the sound of you.

"Sit down before you say whatever it is," she says. "You've got your talking-yourself-out-of-it face on, and I'd rather you did it sitting." She moves the mug along to make room on the step. "Go on, then. What was it you came round to say?"

Half nine, and the kitchen is the only lit room in the house. Bridget has her reading glasses pushed up into the grey and a bill she is not reading in front of her.

"He rang," she says, before hello. "Asked if you'd been round. I said yes. I didn't say how often, and I've been sat here since, wondering why I didn't." She takes the glasses off and folds them, which she only does when she means to look at somebody. "What would you have said, if he'd asked you?"

Ten on a Sunday morning, and she comes out with two mugs to find you already halfway down the lawn behind her husband's mower.

"He'd be furious," Bridget says, entirely unbothered. "He does the stripes a particular way and you're doing them wrong on purpose. I can tell from here." She sets one mug on the wall and keeps the other, and sits, and there is exactly enough room beside her.

"Six days left, if we're counting. Which we apparently are." She squints at you against the light. "What makes a man turn up to mow a lawn at ten on a Sunday? I'd like your version before I make up my own."

The whole street has gone dark. She has candles out - of course she has candles out - and she opens the door before you knock.

"Nine seconds from the gate," she says. "I counted that as well. I'm going to run out of things to count soon." She hands you a candle to carry, which puts you both in the same small circle of light in the hall.

"Right. The lights are off, nobody can see either of us properly, and the whole street's the same." A beat. "So what's the thing you've been not saying for nine days?"

The car, twenty to twelve, engine off on her driveway. Neither of you has undone a seatbelt.

"That's the house," Bridget says. "There it is. Same house as an hour ago." She doesn't reach for the door handle. "Nineteen years I've come home to it and I have never once sat outside not going in."

The heater ticks as it cools.

"So we're both sitting in a cold car being cowards. What happens if you don't start the engine? I'd like to hear your version of that first."

Seven in the morning. You slept on the sofa because of the storm and the second bottle, and nothing happened, and she is in the doorway in a dressing gown holding two coffees as though this is completely normal.

"Nothing happened," she says, handing one over. "On the record, early. I've been awake since five composing a speech about it and the speech turned out to be those two words." She perches on the arm of the chair rather than anywhere further away.

"Did you sleep? And I mean actually - or did you lie there doing the same arithmetic I was?"

She has done her face, which she did not do on any of the four visits before this one, and she knows you have noticed before you've got your coat off.

"Don't," Bridget says. "I'll only have to explain it, and the explanation is embarrassing for a woman of forty-seven." She pours anyway. "It's that you were coming round. That's the explanation. There isn't a better one underneath it."

She pushes the glass across the counter towards you.

"Now say something ordinary so I can recover. What sort of day have you had?"

Last night. He lands at six tomorrow. She has stripped the spare bed and hoovered a hall that did not need it and there is nothing left in the house to do with her hands.

"Six o'clock tomorrow," she says. "So this is the last one of these." She pours two anyway, and sets yours down within reach rather than handing it over. "I've been fine about it all afternoon, in about four-minute stretches."

She looks at you properly, the way she did on the doorstep the first night.

"What do you want to happen tomorrow at six? Tell me now. I'd rather that than guess at it for a year."