Mattie watches fluted lips in noisy movement. Large veined hands rest upon a rising, rattling chest. Late afternoon sunlight reflects off the top of a bald head. Two wisps of hair, the colour of pewter, stick out from neat ears.

She turns her gaze away from the sleeping form of her husband. Outside, cobwebs dance across her vision spangled with raindrops from a recent downpour. Out in the hall, the grandfather clock strikes a quarter of an hour. The chime rings hollow about the large house.

Slowly, with painful care, she picks up the sherry decanter from an old rose wood sideboard and, as she does so, a flash of blue catches her eye. The airmail letter, stuck behind a cracked fruit bowl, arrived that morning. At first, Mattie hoped the letter was from her only son.

But familiar handwriting told her it was from her American pen pal, a woman she'd never met but had written to for over three decades. In her letters, Mattie poured out all her dreams and many white lies about her life in the affulent seaside town she's always lived in and, in return, Eleanor has told Mattie about her rounds of golf, exercising, enjoying dinner parties with her wealthy friends.

Pouring herself a small glass of sherry, Mattie sipping, imagines Florida, the heat, sunlight. Then raising her glass she makes a silent toast to her beloved Arthur and as she does so, notices dampness spread out between his legs.

Since the arrival of Eleanor's latest letter, Mattie's gone over and over what excuses she'd make when her pen pals rings.

"I'll be in the UK at the end of next month," Eleanor wrote. "Will give you a call. We can make arrangements to meet up. Maybe take in a London show?"

Panicked, realising that her fictional life would finally be revealed, Mattie paced her kitchen, knotted fingers plucking at the air until, after a lot of thought, she decided to write an honest letter in return. Now was the time to admit the truth.

Momentarily, she'd felt better until sadness overwhelmed her as, later, she hobbled down to the post box. On the other side of the road, her new next door neighbour pushing her baby in a smart pram, smiled and returning the smile, Mattie longed for the young woman to stop and have a chat.

Sighing at the recent memory, Mattie places her empty glass down on the sideboard. From his chair, Arthur makes a sound as if mimicking hers. Outside, a cloud passes over a lowering sun and she thinks that once, they were young. Once they were active.

She begins to hum a tune, a tune popular during the Second World War. Then she stops and recalls the joys of new motherhood. She remembers the security and love Arthur always gave to her. She sees in her mind's eye, their son Phillip as a laughing toddler and child.

Then he grew up. Went to university. Smiling, she glances at a photgraph on the sideboard showing Phillip holding up his degree.

Subtle changes began, so subtle that she hadn't recognised them. Phone calls and visits home became less regular and a year after gaining his degree, Phillip annouced he was off to Canada and seeing him off at the airport, Arthur assured her that their son would be home within a year.

Five years on, Phillip met and married Patsy and they settled down in Toronto where they've remained for many years. On the one and only occasion when Phillip returned, Mattie sensed that the elegant Patsy had taken a dislike to her parent's-in-law and their shabby surroundings. After the couple departed in their hired car, Arthur, standing on the doorstep, waving them off, said, 'Don't worry, darling, we've got each other.'

Gradually, without being aware of time passing, she and Arthur have grown very old together, living in the same house they bought as newly weds, sixty years ago. Money was tight. The house too big but selling up, buying a small place, had never entered their heads.
'This place is our heart and soul,' Arthur often said.

The grandfather clock out in the hall chimes five 0'clock. Arthur's breathing is quiet. Mattie, going over to her husband, kisses the top of his head. Then, taking a tartan rug from the arm of his chair, she tucks it around him, whispering softly, 'Now you're as snug as a bug, my dear.'

Picking up his empty whiskey tumbler, she leaves the lounge, crosssing the hall into the kitchen. Rinsing the tumbler and wiping it dry, she lifts up a cheap bottle of white wine from the table and carrying both tumbler and wine in arthritic hands, she leaves the kitchen, switching off the light, crossing the darkening hall.

Slowly, she climbs upstairs and enters her bedroom. Sinking down onto the bed, she pats the bedspread, remembering how as a young mother, she'd stiched each colourful square with nimble fingers.

On the bedside table are her sleeping pills, stored up over many months. Earlier, half she'd ground down and put into her husband's whiskey. The other half she tips out onto the bedspread and as she takes the tablets, washing them down with wine, she wonders what Eleanor will think when she reads the final truth.