What it costs the people at home

Your partner hasn't said anything. Your daughter hasn't said anything. Your flatmate, your parent, your friend on the sofa, none of them has complained, and if the leftovers were a problem, surely someone would have said.

They wouldn't, mostly, and there are two reasons. The first is that the leftovers don't look like anything. You're in the room. You answered the boiler question. There's no single moment anyone could point to and say, that, that's what's wrong. There's a general thinness to the evening that nobody can name, and things that can't be named don't get complained about. They get lived with.

The second reason is that the people who notice are often the ones least able to say. A child who tells a story to a nodding face doesn't complain that the face was elsewhere. She tells the story shorter next time, and shorter the time after, and in a few years she tells it to someone else. The earlier book Look up was about the phone during that story, and everything it said about the phone applies to the passenger, which is the phone with nothing in your hand. The child can't see what's in your head. She can see that you're not there, and she's better at seeing it than you'd like.

Your partner can say, and sometimes does, and what they usually say is "you're not listening" or "you're somewhere else", and what you usually answer is that you've had a day. Which is true, and which ends the conversation, and which teaches them that raising it gets them a closed door. Bakker's 168 couples showed what the leftovers cost at the other end of the table. One partner's work getting in the way of home meant a heavier load at home for the other and more exhaustion. Somebody was at the table for both of you. Somebody heard the shoe story. Somebody asked about the boiler and then dealt with the boiler.

There's also what the quiet teaches. If most evenings you're at the desk, then the version of you the people at home know best is the one that's half there. Your daughter's picture of what a parent is like at dinner is being drawn now. Your partner's sense of whether they come before or after the job isn't decided by what you'd say if asked. It's decided by Tuesday, and Wednesday, and the answer to the boiler question you can't remember giving.

I want to be careful here, because this chapter could tip into shame, and shame doesn't help. You're not doing this on purpose. Nobody is. The passenger gets in before you've noticed, and the leftovers are what's left when it's had its share. The point isn't that you're a bad partner or parent. It's that the cost is being paid by people who can't see what's causing it and mostly won't say. That's why it's yours to change.