Together we lie on the bed under the blast of airconditioning. It is 2.30pm. Normally a nothing time, we’re between meals, between television programs, now it his once-upon-a-napping-time.
We lie there, tired from a lack of sleep the previous night. The evenings stick to our sleep like a demon’s breath – tormenting, and vile. We toss and turn and our days aren’t much better.
My daughter copes. She’s out doing crafts, drawing, whereas my son and I fight off sleep. He kneads the fleshy spillover of my breasts – well he tries to, I bat away his hand. He’s too old to do that now without some sort of consequence (isn’t he?) and this saddens me.
We endure the heat as best we know how, and I make thanks for our gift of airconditioning. The papers predict mass power shortages from our extraordinary heatwave this week.
And so I turn to my son, give him a cuddle, and we turn our faces back to the cold air kisses.
