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I found some make-up, and put a little on. A light powder, a touch of blusher. 

I pictured a woman- my mother, I realize now- doing the same, calling it her warpaint, and this morning, as I blotted my lipstick on a tissue and recapped the mascara, the word felt appropriate. 

I felt that I was going into some kind of battle, or that some battle was coming to me. 

Sending me off to school. Putting on her make-up. I tried to think of my mother doing something else. Anything. Nothing came. 

I saw only a void, vast gaps between tiny islands of memory, years of emptiness.

Now, in the kitchen, I open cupboards: bags of pasta, packets of a rice labelled arborio, tins of kidney beans. 

I don’t recognize this food. I remember eating cheese on toast, boil-in-the-bag fish, corned-beef sandwiches. 

I pull out a tin labelled chickpeas, a sachet of something called couscous. I don’t know what these things are, let alone how to cook them. How then do I survive, as a wife?

I look up at the wipe-clean board that Ben had shown me before he left. 

It is a dirty grey colour, words have been scrawled on it and wiped out, replaced, amended, each leaving a faint residue. 

I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile. 

I am certain that all I would find are messages and lists, groceries to buy, tasks to perform.