A woman down the shop knew about the hole in our fence before I did. From the storm, she said. The storm? And she told me a woman’s name.

Our neighbor was sunbathing. When she saw me — through the hole — she tutted and dragged a blanket over herself. From the storm! I said. The storm? Elsa, I said. Yes?

What’s our neighbor’s name? I asked my wife. She told me. Oh well, then that’s why. Fancy having the same name as a storm.

Before I’d touched a nail into the fence my wife and I moved into separate bedrooms. I like to look at the positives — at least I needn’t wear those nose strips anymore. She started off in the room next door but soon that was too close, and she moved room by room further away. She slept in the bathroom, the toilet, the kitchen, the hallway, the dining room, our son’s old room, the living room, the second toilet, the pantry and finally the garden on the side of the house. This sounds like a very orderly retreat, but it wasn’t.It had edge.

I once watched a boy fall out of a tree twenty feet and he didn’t make a sound, not when he hit the branches on the way down, not when he plummeted through the air, not when he thumped on the ground. Whoosh was the only sound he made, a gentle whoosh.

The neighbor took to coming into our garden to follow the sun. She dragged her chair through the gap and then moved it in an arc across the lawn. She smoked menthols, and I could tell from the butts stubbed out in the grass where she’d caught a few rays. By then my wife was spending the occasional night sleeping out on the white sunlounger, so I imagine the company was nice, and occasionally I could see my wife smoked one of the menthols too.

I rehearsed confronting her. You think I don’t know you smoke? I know a thing or two. I do.

I got moved as well. I’d been sleeping on one side of the bed and the other side, empty, called me names and scratched me in the night. Got moved to my office, to the front porch, to the garage, to the back seat of the car. From there I could see the hammer and nails I’d need to fix the fence, but who was in the mood to fix a fence these days? At a certain point it became odd to go back.

I went days without seeing her, but it’s embarrassing to tell people that. I said we were trying something new. I said in many ways we’d never been better. I mentioned the strips a lot — look at the positives! And I could still make them laugh down the pub. Food came and went from the fridge so I knew she was still around, but our bedroom glared at me sometimes. I took to driving the car down the road to sleep on certain nights. And it was the woman down the shop who knew about the neighbor before I did.

This road I sleep on now has a lot of brick walls. Harder to fall down they are. And chain links. And shrubs, thick and green and strong. One thing to see a boy fall twenty feet from a tree — you ever seen a boy try to leap twenty feet back up? I went home, after an age, after even the shrubs thought I’d outstayed my welcome. The fence was mended, nailed down tight and cemented into the ground, and the house was all mine. Almost everything was gone, but the fridge still ran, the bedroom had quietened down, and my hammer was still there.

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