Two weekends ago the Girl and her Mother packed themselves into boxes and suitcases and moved into His house. In the new house their furniture looked  uncomfortable – out of place sulking in corners and standing stooped, pressed against the walls. Scattered around relics of other people’s lives making her impostor status clear; torn children’s book childhood scribbles –  proudly framed photos of His ex-wife, His daughters who stayed there half the time frothing with resentment (or so She thought). In Her room the curtains didn’t match and when someone asked She would describe the colour of the walls as brown-beige  slumped in with pink.  She did not bother to unpack her clothes They remained stumbling out of suitcases She reasoned it would mean less packing (in a couple of years) when She left, got out of there It was the sort of place where you didn’t worry about taking off your shoes at the door And it was the sort of house She might have liked – under different  circumstances with its stretching  wooden floorboards and chipped red paint on the heavy front door, and outside, big shards of scrap wood strewn in a pile In this quietly decomposing house She couldn’t find the cocoa She didn’t know where the scissors or the sticky tape were kept and she didn’t feel like  asking anybody, Her hands fumbled blindly around these foreign walls searching for a light switch in the dark.