The Rooms Upstairs: A Housewife Breeding Story

Mark went to stay with his father.

She kept the pub.

Sasha Bennett is twenty-nine, landlady of a freehouse with three men living over the bar. Her husband Mark is tired, thin on luck, and sure that two weeks in Leeds will be the only thing they have to survive.

Dean is fifty-two and has the cellar. Kyle has the kitchen. Chris has the van keys. They eat at her table. They sleep on her stairs. They have been looking for months.

The first night after last orders she asks them the question Mark has never answered. What follows is two weeks of the house used properly: the staff kitchen, the cellar steps, the function-room sofa, the bed with his photograph on the wall. She tells them she wants a child. She tells them not to pull out. She tells Mark, on the phone, that the lads are well-behaved.

When Mark drives home he believes the mess is his.

Six weeks later there are two lines on the cistern.

His name goes on the form.