The storm continued throughout the next day. The following night the clouds blew away and the temperature dropped. All the world outside froze solid. The roads were pure ice. Annie couldn't come back that day even if she was ready to.

And that was too bad for the animals. He could hear the cows complaining in the barn: Annie hadn't milked them and they were in pain. As the days passed he heard no more noises from them.

Paul's routine was easy. During the daytime he ate food which Annie would not miss from the kitchen. She had stored hundreds of cans of food, and it was easy for Paul to take a few cans from here and a few from there so that Annie would not notice. So he had enough to eat, he took his tablets regularly, slept and wrote his novel; in the evenings he played 'Can You?' with ideas about killing Annie. A lot of ideas came to him, but most of them were impossible or too complicated. This was no game, this was his life. It would have to be something simple.

In the end he went to the kitchen and chose the longest, sharpest butcher's knife he could find. On the way back into his room he stopped to rub at the new marks he was making on the door-frame. The marks were clearer than before. But it doesn't matter, he thought, because as soon as she returns, the first time she comes into my room...

He pushed the knife under the mattress. When Annie came back he was going to ask her for a drink of water. She would bend over to give it to him and then he would stab her in the throat. Nothing complicated.

Paul closed his eyes and went to sleep. When Annie's car came whispering into the farm at four o'clock that morning, with its engine and its lights switched off, he did not move. It was only when he felt the sting of the syringe in his arm and woke to see her face close to his that he knew she was back.