With her brows furrowed and her eyes screwed up in concentration, she thought it strange how complicated the instructions were at a time when simplicity would be greatly appreciated. After finally urinating on the intended surface, initially on her shaking hands, she placed the time bomb on her bathroom vanity facing her and impatiently stared up at the clock.

The sound of the second hand never seemed so loud before; there had been days when she went without ever hearing it tick once, months even, yet now each stroke of the slender sliver of metal seemed to be a boisterous crack of a cymbal. A full minute would have to pass before she could tell if her life as she knew it was over. She perched her pert bottom on the edge of the pale blue ceramic bathtub. She rested her chin in the cup of her clasped hands. Breathing in deeply from the pit of her soul and then releasing it, long and slow, till she felt empty and deflated. This would be the longest minute of her existence.

On the street outside her house a taxi door opened and a shiny black boot emerged, then another. The green pants and shirt of the Zimbabwean Army followed. Dengwe left work early on that Wednesday because the hangover that he was painfully nursing all morning had finally won; he leaned over and hurled painfully into a bin. All he wanted was to take a warm shower and to curl up in bed. He banked on it being blissfully silent at home because the children would still be at school.

Raising his left hand to massage his aching temple he gently undid the padlock on the gate outside his property. Even with extra care, the grating sound of metal against metal seemed to scrape against his shot nerves. He walked along the neatly paved pathway to the front door, noticing with great annoyance the slightly unkempt lawn whose fringe had sprawled over onto the neat paving that he had painstakingly fitted himself. The heat that rose from his neck in licks exacerbated his headache and his foul mood worsened.

For the first time in her life Merril had seen the minute hand on a clock move. Sadly, this had only occurred at the 10 second mark. Her eyes were bright with concentration as she watched the clock with all the attention she could muster. She blinked regularly to maintain alertness, surprised at just how long each second actually was. She was thinking about how much time she had wasted, how many fruitless thousands of seconds were wasted on social media, television or even just gossiping with other army wives. That was time that she would never get back.

At the end of it, she would find tragically, that she had spent a great chunk of her life doing absolutely nothing. This seemed horribly wasteful in a world where so many are desperate for more time. Her shoulders slumped as she felt the weight of a life poorly lived and a mountain of regrets weigh down on her.

Her back stiffened suddenly and her eyes widened in terror when she heard the front door swing open and brisk footsteps follow the passage down to her bathroom.

Tell us: Do you think Dengwe will find out that Merril is having an affair?