If I were to do something which requires the marshalling of more resources than would be worth my while at this moment – to raise myself high enough to pull out the top right hand drawer of the sturdy cedar chest in which my brother still keeps some of his clothing, I would find face down on the socks (some still neatly paired and balled in one of the woman’s final acts before taking her leave) a framed photograph depicting him, the woman and the two boys against the sort of smeared greyish background which seems de rigueur in the sorts of studios from which such families emerge once but seldom twice in their lifetimes with vaunted proof of their conformability. Uncertain smiles seem to be the order of the day for him and the boys. The smile of the woman is a different thing altogether. It is as sure of itself as the others are not and it knows more than the three of them combined. The main thing it knows is that it will not be arranging itself in any more of these time-honoured tableaux, that in a matter of months its contact with its spousal counterpart (from whom careful study reveals not so much a refusal to reciprocate the artfully encompassing arm in which it would have one believe she nestles but rather a tepid indifference to it) will be reduced to terse typed memoranda sent from an undisclosed location. I have studied it at length but I detected the clues immediately. I know dead eyes when I see ...