The Question of Breakfast

The Question of Breakfast


The kettle whistled, the low, polite sound it made every time the cycle completed. Tea was every afternoon at four. George didn’t have to look at the clock. The television paced their days. The advert breaks gave him just enough time to put the kettle on. The steam hitting the tile was his reminder, like a trusty timepiece.

Honor liked her tea at four, before the start of the antiques show where they tried to outdo each other on guessing the profit. Although lately it was more about the quiet realisation that most of the antiques were now just childhood memories, at a vastly inflated price. He brought the tray into the sitting room where she sat, remote in hand, making sure the afternoon matinee ran as planned.


As the credits rolled, they both turned to the Scrabble board already open on the table, the wooden tiles worn smooth at the edges. He had set it up while she rested her eyes, pretending to still be watching the programme. His eyes lifted every few seconds, checking that she was still with him.


“Seventeen points,” Honor said, tapping the board. She had played TRAIN.


“You always get the double letter,” George grumbled, though he’d watched her count the spaces three turns ago.

He smiled into his tea. “I’m filing a formal complaint.”


“File it with the cat,” she said, though the cat had been dead for six years.


They both laughed. It was an old joke, worn comfortable like a favourite T-shirt.


The news came on at six. They didn’t listen to the headlines anymore, but they liked the murmur of the presenter’s voice; it filled the gaps between their own. They ate chicken with potatos and peas, followed by a small bowl of tinned peaches and evaporated milk.

George cleared the plates before she could reach for them. By ten, the lights were out.


The next day followed the same shape.
The morning passed quietly. Honor read aloud from the newspaper at the table, stopping every few sentences, the pause stretching as she gathered her thoughts. For a moment it felt as though time stalled, then continued again just as George was about to ask what came next.


“They’re putting up new traffic lights on the high street,” she said.


“Good luck to them,” George replied, confused but smoothing over the discontinuity as he always did.


She suggested they might need some yellow lines as well, gesturing vaguely towards a junction that existed only in her head. He agreed, though silently finished the thought the way he always did: yellow lines would be pointless, everyone ignores them anyway.


By midday, the rain had started, pattering gently against the window in a way that suggested it wouldn’t last.


“Shall we sit by the window?” she asked.
“If it clears,” he said. They would sit there anyway.


They did. Lunch was soup from a tin and half a loaf of bread that had begun to go stale at the edges. George buttered her slice first and handed it to her. Only after she took a bite did he turn back to his own.


“You’ll spoil your appetite,” he said.


“For what?” she asked.
“Dinner.”


She laughed. “Ambitious.”


In the afternoon they watched a programme about gardens. Neither of them gardened now. Honor liked the presenter’s voice; George liked that she didn’t have to concentrate too hard on it. It gave him time to watch her face as she smiled at the screen. She loved hearing about which roses to plant and when, even though the garden they had once tended was no longer theirs.


The apartment was small, but it made sense. Everything she needed was within reach.


When the rain stopped, they commented on the way the light changed on the pavement outside, how the sound of the cars shifted as tyres passed over wet tarmac. When the rain started again, they agreed it had been too brief to matter to the roses.


At four, the kettle whistled again. George didn’t have to look at the clock. He poured the tea and carried it in on the tray.


The Scrabble board was still out. It never really went away, just rotated, and nudged, then left ready.


Today George won by four points, which he felt was worth mentioning.


“You miscounted,” Honor said mildly.


“I did not.”


“You always do.”


He grinned. “Then I won honestly, by mistake.”


Dinner was salmon that night, overcooked slightly. George apologised. Honor said she preferred it that way. He made a note to cook it a minute less next time. They went to bed at the usual time. He turned off the lamp.

She reached for his hand in the dark, more out of habit than need. George stayed awake a moment longer, listening to her breathing settle, before allowing himself to sleep.


“Same again tomorrow,” she said.


“Of course,” he replied.


The phone rarely rang. The letterbox was filled with pizza flyers and local council updates. They didn’t use a calendar anymore; the only reminders were medical appointments that chimed quietly through the ageing mobile he kept by the bed.


If it was raining, they stayed in. If it was sunny, they still stayed in but sat by the window.


They were content. This was their life now. It had settled this way without either of them noticing when.


In the morning, the light filtered through the thin curtains, casting a pale yellow square across the duvet. George stretched, his joints popping in the quiet. He turned onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow.


“What do you want for breakfast this morning?” he asked.


He asked it the same way other people checked the weather, not because the answer mattered, but because it told him how the day should begin.


They both knew there was only porridge or toast.


“Surprise me,” Honor would usually say, eyes still closed. “Crêpes? Smoked salmon? A five-course gourmet delight?”


“I’ll see what the chef can do,” George would reply.


That morning, the square of light stayed motionless. Honor’s eyes didn’t open. The room remained perfectly, brutally silent. There was no punchline. The delay stretched from a second into a minute, then into a permanent state of being.


The afternoon was a blur of grey trousers and polite, professional voices.


George sat in the plastic chair at the hospital and signed the forms where the nurse pointed. He spoke clearly. He confirmed the dates and the spellings. He was good at moving through days; he had decades of practice in following a sequence.


“Do you have someone to call, Mr McAllen?” the doctor asked.


“No,” George replied. “Just the arrangements, please.”


He walked home. He let himself into the apartment. The air smelled of the salmon from the day before. The Scrabble board was still on the table, the word HOME sitting where he had left it, his winning flourish from the day before.


He went into the kitchen. He stood by the counter. He looked at the bread bin. He looked at the box of oats.


He knew how to cook.

What he could not do was choose, because the choice required her to witness it.


He went to the window and looked out at the street. People were walking dogs. Cars were turning corners.

He realised then that he had no way to explain to any of them what had happened, because to explain the end, he would have to explain the routine, and the routine was his entire vocabulary.


He looked at her chair in the sitting room.


I don’t know how to exist without you.


The kettle, left untouched, cooled on the stove, making tiny, metallic clicking sounds in the silence.