He leans forward and picks up a book from the coffee table. Aristotle's Poetics Poetics, if you don't mind.

"You don't pester me, Julie."

He opens it and starts reading.

"I see."

"No more than any other woman."

"So I'm like any other woman?"

"No, Julie. You certainly are not not like any other woman." like any other woman."

"Have you experience of any other women?"

"No."

"So I might actually pester you more than other women?"

"Quite possibly," he replies, after a brief spell of dumbness suggesting bewilderment.

"We're getting warmer."

It's hard to know for sure if he is actually reading Aristotle or merely feigning to read Aristotle.

"Does it annoy you, for instance, when I interrupt your reading?"

He looks up at me, leaden patience on his brow. "Now that you mention it, I do enjoy reading in peace."

"Does it annoy you when I call you at work?"

"Only when I'm busy."

"Like when you're extracting teeth on hot summer afternoons?"

Pause.

He lowers his eyes to his book once more. "Precisely."

"So it annoys you."

"Julie, could we..."

"It annoys you."

Glances up at me. "Okay. You win. It annoys me."

"And when my mother stays over. Does that annoy you?"

Exhales a huge breath. "Well, that... that... annoys me. Yes." annoys me. Yes."

"We're communicating at last, Ronan. This is very healthy."

He puts down the book on the table. "I thought your period wasn't due for another two weeks."

"That's a line of questioning I would not pursue if I were you."

He picks up a copy of Time Time magazine instead. magazine instead.

"Do you think I'm possessive?"

He chucks down the magazine again, gets up and goes out to the balcony.

I follow him out for the next instalment of nagging. "Well?"

"What?"

"I want to know if you think I'm possessive."

"Well, yes," he says, averting his eyes. "Now that you mention it."

"I see."

I spread my vision around the blue bend of Dublin Bay. How lovely it is to live by the sea. You can actually hear the waves from here.

"How am I possessive?"

He's turns to me now. "Julie, since you came back from your holiday on Thursday you've been making me feel like...like a rat."

I turn to face him directly, my bum pressing against the railings. "And how does a rat feel?"

"Cornered," he replies, avoiding my gaze. "I can't move in the apartment without feeling like an endangered species."

"Rats aren't an endan"

"Yes they arein an apartment."

"Do I endanger you? I do apologize. But I'm talking in general. Not just in the last few days."

"In general you're fine."

"Even in bed?"

"What?"

"Are you happy with the sex, Ronan?"

"Keep your voice down, our neighbours below will hear."

"Are you happy with the sex?" I repeat in a raised voice.

"It's fine," he whispers, grinding his jaw.

"If practically non-existent."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Why are you perspiring?"

He takes a deep breath. I am seriously nagging him now. But is that not what I do? Is that not my speciality?

"I know why you're doing this," he says, studying me with a cruel mouth. "It's that thing about having children, isn't it?"

"Thing?"

"Ever since you've come back from the country you've been behaving oddly. You admitted as much yesterday."

I turn back round and stare out to sea. Two seagulls are lolling and lounging overhead, crying and cackling, wide wings like surfboards cruising the breeze.

"This is about you wanting children, isn't it?"

It's not about me wanting children, actually. Athough now that he mentions it, I won't deny that having a child is a craving in my heart that is tearing away inside me. I don't deny that it's a longing and an emptiness, a scouring ache in my chest, a blockage in mid-stream craving to be freed.

I'm so sick of everything.

"You think this is about me wanting children?"

"Manifestly."

"You prick prick!"

I'm gleaming at him like a death ray.

"Look, for God's sake, I'm not saying we can't ever ever have a child." have a child."

"Liar."

He grins suddenly. "Is that alcohol I smell on your breath?"

He tries to put an arm round me. I forcibly shove him away and rush into the lounge, dart over to the aquarium and fling my weight against it as hard as I can.

The whole thingpedestal plus fish tanktopples and crashes and splinters on to the marble floor, deluging the lounge with gallons of pouring water and shards of glass. And a panorama of colourful fish.

I fold my arms.

I'm becoming a dab hand with aquaria.

This is way, way better than Arklow pottery.

Ronan enters and proceeds to go ape. He's in and out of the kitchen. He's got a bucket and half a dozen tea towels. He's on his knees now, scraping around for survivors, dumping them into the empty bucket. Mouth agape, he shouts in a falsetto of panic what the hell is wrong with me. He needn't think I'm going to answer that particular question right now.

"Look what you've done!" he yells.

"So?"

Cool as can be, I stroll to the french windows and yet again admire our terrific bay view.

Ronan reruns into the kitchen and re-emerges with a mop this time, and starts mopping and mulching and squashing and squelching the water into the bucket with his fingers. He's shouting at me to grab a towel and make myself useful.

I smile at himthis is not woman's work.

My feet splash through the torrent as I saunter my lazy way through to the kitchen, grabbing his bucket as I pass. He yells again at me, wondering why I've just removed his bucket. I reply that dirty water and fish and broken glass don't mix. That he must care a great deal about fish if he's happy to let them suffocate in jagged shallow waters, their piscal pores clogged with floor dirt.

There are eight or ten poor darlings flippering helplessly away in the bottom of the bucket. By the tail, I extract the ones which Ronan brought home yesterday and drop them head first into the sink with a thud. In order of guest appearance: one skunk-striped clownfish, one oriental sweetlips and one lemon-peel angelfish. Barely a blip from any of them though I'll admit to spying a small flicker from the sweetlips. I now fill the bucket with water before the remainder kick it. Then I wrap the sink-dumped fish in a plastic bag and stuff it in the back of the fridge-freezer.

Ronan's roaring at me for the bucket. It's such a relief to witness him being human at last. I bring him the round metal bread bin insteadit's sure to leak. He's still thrashing about on the floor like a drowning rat (surely not extinct in de luxe apartments?), shouting and complaining, and panting like a dog. In short, seriously compromising his dignity.

Housework: this is the effect it has on them.

Mother appears.

In the doorway to the hall.

In her cream nightie.

I join her, folding my arms. She looks at me, I shrug and she looks away again.

We're just standing here, watching him pick up the remaining flippering fish and dump them into the leaky bread bin. Now he's soaking up the rest of the water with the mop and the drowned dishcloths, and squeezing them into same. Eventually he stops and turns round.

He sees Mother. She's smiling down at him.

"Oh, it's you," he says, flushing.

"I never knew you were one to wash floors, Ronan," she says.

Silence.

"Whatever happened?" she presses.

"This is Julie's dramatic way of saying," he pants, "that she desperately craves a baby."

Mother eyes me to see if it's true.

"That's a lie!" I shout.

"But I'm used to her," he adds, mopping away. "Julie has always been quite demonstrative."

I glare down at him with all the venom I can muster and stride right out of the apartment, secretly wishing him as much ill as I can provide from this small, fragile heart of mine.