I am standing in the kitchen, a knuckle pressed to my lips, trying to remember why I came in here, when I feel eyes on me. I turn around to see the tortoise in the middle of the floor, gazing up with his usual, vaguely pissed-off expression.
“Well, well, well,” I say. “Where have you been?” This is rhetorical: the tortoise has been lying stone still, legs and head tucked in, beneath the washing machine for the past 40 days.
