He should be here. He should have been here, back from work, hours ago. And she knows.

Her childish charade is betrayed. Her footsteps sound heavy and dull, like the slap, slap, slapping of a dead fish against the ground. Then a silence, a facial expression that divulges no secret, she stares out of the window, her eyes trying to pick up a clue, a hint of his having been here, and failing for hours, she continues to stare.

"Looks like he isn't coming home," she says, pauses, then urgently adds as an afterthought, "Not that I care, you understand. It doesn't make a difference whether he's here or not." Her tone the epitome of cold apathy, she returns to the window, age and nonchalance and wrinkles carved by streams written all over her face.

She waits.