The clock had stopped.

The clock had stopped at two minutes past eleven, but whether that was eleven this morning, last night, or three weeks ago, he wasn't sure. He rarely looked at the clock - it was just something that was there, on the wall, taking up space. Something that he would, no doubt, miss were it ever to be gone, but, because of the sameness of it, because of the reliability of its general shape being where it always was, it went unnoticed.

It was only the fly that was buzzing annoyingly around the room that caused him, in his desperate bid to swat it with the Radio Times, to look in the clock's direction in the first place. And now the fly was forgotten.

Who normally changed the batteries on the thing? It had been around for years, and yet he had never done it, and it must have been done.

The realisation was a sharp pain in his gut, a blinding shock that ran through him and exited his body with a jolt, a stab, a never-ending momentary shiver. His father. The only one who could have - would have - done it.

No wonder, then, that the clock had stopped.

The clocked had stopped. And he cried, at last.