Catherine sat at the kitchen bench, staring abstractedly into Ben's porridge bowl. It was so clean and shiny it might have been licked, though she imagined she would have noticed if that were the case. She herself tended to half-eat food and then forget about it. Roger didn't like that for some reason, so, back home in London, she'd taken to hiding her food as soon as she lost her appetite for it, in whatever nook or receptacle was closest to hand. I'll finish this later, she'd tell herself, but then the world would turn, turn, turn. Days, weeks later, ossified bagels would fall out of coat pockets, furry yoghurts would peep out of the jewellery drawer, liquefying bananas would lie like corpses inside the coffins of her shoes. Michel Faber, The Courage Consort (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2002), 42-3.
