8
Tom faced the new day with dread, a slight hangover, and a very bruised body. He felt healed enough to do a ride on his stationary bike for thirty minutes, hit the speedball for twenty minutes and then warm down by skipping rope. He worked through the pain, telling himself that his muscles needed to work to unclench and that his body needed to loosen so his mind could. And anyway, he deserved pain.
He went outside to get the morning paper and waved to his neighbour, Charlie, as he drove off to work in his new black Mercedes with the top down. Tom looked back over his house. The sandstone was Helen’s choice, but he had insisted on the jarrah verandah and the gabled roof, throwbacks to his childhood home. They were at odds with each other, but he didn’t mind. He could see a pattern in it
