Claire ran the bath at half past eight, which was early, and she did not care.

It had been the kind of day that gets into your shoulders. Nothing had gone wrong. It had simply been long, and cold, and full of small things, and now it was over, and the small things could wait until tomorrow, and the bath could not.

The bathroom was at the top of the house under the roof, and in winter it was the warmest room in it, because the boiler was next door and the window was small. She put the plug in. She turned the hot tap on full and the cold on a little, and the water came out loud and then, as the bath filled, less loud, and the steam went up and found the ceiling and hung there.

She lit the candle on the windowsill. Not for any reason. Because it was there.

Downstairs she could hear Rob in the kitchen, the tap running, the clink of the plates being done, the radio on low, talking about something that did not matter. She could hear it through the floor as a murmur with no words in it. It was a good sound. It was the sound of someone else being in the house and having things in hand.

She tested the water with her hand. Too hot. Good. She turned the hot off and let the cold run a moment longer, and turned that off too, and the room went quiet except for the drip of the tap and the small tick of the candle.

Then she got in.

There is a way of getting into a bath that is too hot, which is slowly, in stages, with a certain amount of breathing out. She did it that way. One foot, and the other, and then down, an inch at a time, with the heat coming up her legs and her back and the water rising to meet her, until she was in, all of her, to the chin, and lay there, and did not move.

The heat went into her shoulders first. She could feel it going in, finding the place where the day was, and settling there, and the day beginning, very slowly, to let go.

She closed her eyes.

Steam. The candle ticking. Water, when she moved a hand, making its small sounds against the side. From below, the murmur of the radio, and Rob putting a plate on the rack, and then another plate. The window, above her, dark, with the candle’s flame in it, twice, once on the glass and once beyond the glass in the cold.

She did not think about anything. She had been going to think about tomorrow, and she found that she had not, and she let that be.

After a while she ran a little more hot in. The tap made its noise and the heat came round her feet and spread, and she turned it off, and lay back again.

The candle burned down a little.

Downstairs, the plates finished. The radio went off. She heard Rob’s feet on the stairs, and the pause outside the door, and his voice, not loud.

“Tea?”

“In a bit,” she said.

“I’ll leave it here.”

She heard the cup go down on the floor outside the door, and his feet going away again, and the bedroom door, and the small sounds of someone turning the bed down and getting the room ready, and then nothing.

The water was cooling now. Not cold. Only cooling, the way it does, so that you notice it, and think about getting out, and do not, quite, yet.

She lay a little longer.

The candle flame stood up straight in the still air.

The tap dripped, once.

Then she sat up, and the water moved with her and settled, and she pulled the plug, and the bath began, slowly, to empty, with the long low sound that a bath makes, going down, going down.

Outside the door, the tea was waiting. Beyond it, the bed was ready, and the house was warm, and the night was long and had nothing in it that needed doing.

She reached for the towel.