When I heave my sore body downstairs, Nicholas cries from another room, “Not yet! Hold on.” He clamps his hands over my eyes and nudges me into the kitchen, where I’m forced to wait in stupefied silence for ten minutes until he shouts hoarsely, “Okay! You can come in now.” “You need to save your voice,” I say as I walk toward the sound of his shuffling. I stop dead in the doorway of the drawing room. He’s rearranged it: taken out the TV and relocated his desk to a different wall. My desk is in here, too, flush with his rather than squashed into a drafty living room corner.
