Looking around the house, I cannot help but notice that we are moving. Long before a single box has been packed, my wife is looking to sell, donate or throw away everything we aren’t taking with us. When I come downstairs to make coffee in the morning, bin liners are lying in drifts across the kitchen and the worktop is uncluttered.
“Where is the coffee machine?” I ask.
There is an awkward silence.
“You’re always complaining about it,” she says. “It was just gathering dust.”
“Gathering dust, and making coffee,” I say. “I just bought 30 pods for it.”
“The pods are environmentally unfriendly,” she says. “I’ll buy you a new coffee machine.”
“That doesn’t help me now,” I say.
I find the machine in a box on the floor. I plug it back in, make coffee and go upstairs. When I come back down half an hour later for a second cup, the coffee machine is gone again.
Our friend Kate has come to help my wife organise things into piles. I hear dramatic sighs from downstairs, and I know they’ve uncovered a trove of old photographs or a child’s drawing. When I hear stifled laughter, I imagine them sharing a joke at the expense of a man who owns a biscuit tin full of broken bits of china he found in the park.
The next day, some men take away my office sofa. The sofa was old and covered in duct tape repairs, but it served a purpose: it stood in front of a cupboard full of junk I felt obliged to keep but never wanted to see again.
At lunchtime, Kate is sent upstairs to guide me through the emptying of the cupboard. She speaks to me in a soft voice, as if I were a skittish horse. “What’s this?” she asks, holding up a box with two antennae sticking out of it.
“A wireless router from yesteryear,” I say. “Chuck it.”
“And this?” she asks, producing a folder with the word “Correspondence” written on its tab.
“That’s fan mail, actual written letters,” I say. “Do I keep that sort of thing?”
“Up to you, my love,” she says.
“I just need to go through it,” I say, opening the file for the first time ever.
“What’s in this bag?” she asks.
“Telephone adaptors of many lands,” I say, glancing up. “Like new.”
“Bin, I think,” she says.
“Actually, these are all letters of abuse and complaint,” I say.
“So they can go?” Kate says.
“No, I’d better keep them,” I say. “People went to a lot of trouble.”
That afternoon, I walk into the kitchen carrying half a litre of kerosene I found in a pile of stuff by the stairs. “How dare you,” I say. “This is my kerosene, for my kerosene lamp.”
Kate and my wife exchange looks. “Fine,” my wife says. “Put it back in the shed.” Something horrible occurs to me. I pull open the drawer next to the dishwasher; it’s empty but for a set of keys.
“Where are my lamp wicks?” I ask.
“Uh-oh,” my wife says.
“His what?” Kate says.
“Tell me you didn’t,” I say.
“I did,” my wife says.
“I ordered them specially!” I say, my voice louder than I’d planned.
“What are we talking about?” Kate asks.
“They came from Germany!” I shout. They did not come from Germany. The panic rising in me cannot be explained by the loss of four lamp wicks, but it’s there all the same.
“We’ve saved your bits of china,” my wife says, holding up the tin. I sense that Kate is trying very hard not to smile.
“Good,” I say. “I have big plans for those.”
