“Have a nice nap?” Clay was teasing, not amorous (he was still sated) but romantic – even better or rarer. They’d made a nice together for themselves, hadn’t they?

Amanda did the New York Times crossword on her phone – she was afraid of dementia, and felt this was preventative – and the time passed strangely, as it did when measured in minutes before the television. If the night before she’d been eager to look at her work and fuck her husband, tonight it felt important to linger on the sofa with her children. Archie dopey in his too-big hooded sweatshirt, Rose infantile, wrapped in the itchy woollen throw left on the sofa’s arm. Clay served bowls of ice cream, then collected the bowls, and the dishwasher ran with its reassuring gurgle, and Rose’s eyes looked blank and Archie yawned loudly, suddenly, so like a man, and Amanda sent the children to bed, telling them to brush their teeth but not standing sentry to verify that they did.

She yawned, was tired enough to go to bed, but knew somehow that if she moved, she would not fall asleep. Clay changed the channel, pausing for a moment on Rachel Maddow and then switching to a thriller that neither of them were able to follow, detectives and their prey.

“Television is idiotic.” Clay turned it off. He’d rather play with his phone. He dropped some ice into a glass. “You want a drink?”

Amanda shook her head. “I’m done.”

She didn’t yet quite know which switch controlled which light. She flicked one, and the pool and the grounds beyond it were illuminated, pure white beams that shot through the green branches overhead. She turned the light off, returning things to their black state, which seemed right, seemed natural.

Read an extract from Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam