Tarts and Terror

Friday 11th March

Day 324

8 am - My father rings and tells me about the earthquake in Japan. I email my friend there in Tokyo. I read the news about the power cuts in her city, and the floods and deaths in the north.

12.30 - A birthday lunch with the girls in our favourite cafe - three little cheesy tarts in a garden of salads, bright paper parcels on the table, bunches of flowers - tulips and gerbera daisies - wrapped in friendship.

5 pm - A telephone call re-awakens my fluttering terror, which has been lying low - a trembling claw in the pit of my gut - growling again. It's not just us any more. All the people we know and love, and some we don't, are caught up in the rolling wave of my husband's 'brainy thing' - his name for it.

I must go and make supper. Chop an onion. Let my imagined tsunami release into the strokes of my big knife. Peel the butternut squash. Put the pasta on to boil. Remember. Remember to love. Noone dying in this house tonight. Just some lights going off in my husband's head.