By Colin Fleming

 “Well, he’s back again,” my husband, Jacob, declares as the breakfast march begins. 

The breakfast march comprises the two of us coming down the hallway on a Saturday, single file, after a night three feet apart in bed, because it’s not possible to stand side by side, which is the dimensional reality of the corridors of a house from 1721. The oak of the walls is blackened in the manner of quality aged rum or the honeycomb of a well-worked hive that falls to the ground and cracks open in autumn. Charred, tarry wood brushed with beeswax and a veneer of smoke from cured fish. 

“Whatever,” Jacob adds, the tart, thin smile of an apple rind in his voice. One of those smiles that tries to go somewhere and doesn’t make it. “Old bastard’s earned it.” 

See the full story in the digital magazine above.