Excerpt from Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'It doesn't seem to be coming from here,' I reported. In the excitement of this unusual morning, my daughter hadn't touched her breakfast. 'Hurry up and drink your milk,' I scolded. 'We're leaving in a minute. You'll get into trouble with your teacher again.'

'Look, lady, don't give me that. What's this puddle doing here, then? Here. Come on, you won't see it from in there.'

The man backed down two steps in the narrow stairwell and glowered at me, so there was nothing for it: I stepped outside in my slippers. He slammed the door and pointed at the landing. He was right, there was actually a small puddle on the floor. I looked up at the ceiling. That could have been a water stain in the corner, but the ceiling in my apartment had similar marks. The realtor had explained those away: the rain had leaked in badly at one time, but the terraced rooftop had since been completely repaired.

'... Well, I don't know, surely this puddle can't be –' As I spoke, my daughter burst into tears on the other side of the door. I reached to open it, and the man grabbed my arm.

'The water is obviously coming from this floor,' he said. 'I've left my wife to cope, and she doesn't know which way to turn. Because when we opened up, we found all our files soaking wet. Come down and have a look. You'll see.'

My daughter was crying harder. Brushing the man aside, I tried to wrestle the door open. With nowhere to stand on the tiny landing, he scrambled out of the way down the steps.

After scooping up my howling daughter, who was hot all over, I told him, 'In any case, we've established the leak isn't in here. Would you mind checking again on your side? I have to go to work now, so please come back this evening if there's still a problem. I'll be home at six.'

And without waiting for his answer I shut the door. He went downstairs without further protest. It was already time to get going. As my daughter clung to my shoulder, I wiped her flushed face with a wet cloth, then gave up on breakfast and rushed out. I crept down the stairs, afraid of being hailed again. Through the office's open door, I could hear the man venting his frustration by swearing at his wife.

The leak he had reported concerned me very little. My daughter had gone without breakfast, and instead of waving her usual cheerful goodbye at the daycare centre, she pressed herself against me and let out a wail, trembling as though the teachers would devour her if she took a step in their direction. Two of them were eventually needed to march her indoors and I ended up late for work, on top of everything. As a result, I was less worried about the water than annoyed at having the start of my day disrupted for no good reason. What made him think he had the right to come to a stranger's door and carry on like that? The man's behaviour seemed the height of selfishness, and I held it against him. I had completely forgotten the faint splashing I had heard in the night.

During the lunch break Fujino called as I was having my sandwich and carton of milk at my desk, as usual, across from Kobayashi, my immediate boss at the music library. 'It's your husband,' Kobayashi said, and passed the receiver offhandedly. Murmuring 'Thanks,' I put it to my ear. I heard Fujino's familiar voice. The awareness that I'd missed that voice instantly gave way to a rush of fury. I could not even manage to speak in a natural, normal tone, despite all my promises to myself that if Fujino got in touch we would catch up casually, if only so as not to complicate the way things were between us, with our daughter in the middle, and that one day I would try to find the words to explain why, in the end, it was me who'd decided I wanted to split up – though, admittedly, I didn't understand too well myself how I'd arrived there.

I was acutely conscious of Kobayashi listening. There had been another call from Fujino that he had passed over to me, four years earlier. We were living together at the time but not yet officially married. I don't remember what the call was about; perhaps we discussed meeting somewhere for dinner. As Fujino was receiving both a scholarship from his university and an allowance from his parents, we were better off financially in those days than at any other time in our four years together, and we often ate out. I was content with my new life, which didn't require much in the way of domesticity. And, as usual, I had chatted that day without particularly caring that Kobayashi was within earshot.

Copyright © 1979, 1993 by Yūko Tsushima
English translation copyright © 2018 by Geraldine Harcourt