He let go of my arms.

“Well, it’s on now.”

“I did it again this morning and it held.

I think it’s the panel.

I’ll get Marek to look at it.”

And he said, “Right,” and went to get a cup, and the entire exchange took forty seconds, and it is the single best thing I have ever done.

Because what I had given him was a boring, self-consistent, slightly irritating domestic explanation that accounted for a dark house and a woman who was not in her bed, and it did not require him to revise anything.

He wanted that explanation.