We all end up alone in the end

Sunday 6.30pm at home

I am sitting alone at the table after Sunday dinner. I have spent an hour preparing it, twenty minutes eating, and now I am sitting amid the debris that will be here until I clear it up. I set the table for four but only Nicola and me were there. Middle son is out, the youngest is in front of the telly moaning as usual, and the eldest has just come in, loaded a plate and gone back to his bedroom without a word as is usual around me at the moment. Nicola and me were talking and I made the mistake of saying that sometimes I feel depressed, that after coming out of the pictures the return to mundane real life depresses me. Like that post holiday depression you can get. I have said it before and I will probably say the same thing again, but of course every time she takes it the wrong way, as a critisism of herself and with a " thanks very much " she goes of in a huff. So here I am, alone again. I wonder if this is how it will end one day - we will wonder apart into different rooms and not speak, a bit like the couples I have seen in cafes, together but seperate - strangers it appears.

I really hope not.