We had just finished the renovation and we had wanted the big television for the better part of a year, so we saved eight months for it, ninety inches, two thousand eight hundred dollars, installed the week before my husband’s birthday. Then the family came for dinner, and Priscilla brought her boys, five and seven, who are usually good children. The crash brought all of us running. When I asked her whether she might split the cost, she shrugged and said they were just kids and asked why she should pay because I could not put a television somewhere sensible.

I went to fetch gloves and bin bags, and coming back down the hall I heard her telling her sons that they had done exactly what she had asked, that they could have whatever toys they wanted, and that people who could afford a renovation could afford a new screen.