The fumes had now risen to the ceiling and hung above his head like a swirling sea mist, and for the first time he became aware that he had not been alone in the kitchen when he had attempted his rescue. Millie sat with her chin resting on her hands at one end of the long pine table, her homework spread out in front of her. There was not much indication, however, of any great learning taking place, unless she had found a way of indoctrinating her brain with an enormous pair of Sony earphones clamped about her head, whilst her eyes feasted on a video recording of that day’s episode of Eastenders.

Dan kicked the oven door closed and lobbed the oven glove onto the work surface. “Millie, you twit, you might have called me. The whole house could have caught on fire.”

Millie made no move, except to pull a long string of chewing gum from her mouth and then reel it back in again with her tongue. Dan moved up behind her and lifted the earphones off her head. “Millie!”

His daughter jumped round in her chair. “What?”

“Your dinner is cremated. It is burnt to a frazzle.”

“So? You can’t blame me for that.”

“I’m not blaming you for anything, but didn’t you happen to notice that it was nigh on impossible to see the television for smoke?”

Millie once again resumed her chin-in-hands position and fixed her eyes on the television. “How was I to know that it wasn’t meant to be like that?”

“Well, I would have thought that the smell might have given you just the smallest indication that something was burning.”

“I didn’t notice the smell.”

“Millie! Come on, pull the other one!”

She twisted round again, her hands outstretched to accentuate her blamelessness. “I didn’t! How could I? I was listening to music.”

Dan was left speechless by the reply. He shifted his baffled gaze from the earphones in his hand, which were still linked to the portable CD on the table and still blaring out music, to Millie’s ears, wondering if there was some appalling defect in his daughter’s sensory organs about which he had not previously known. He eventually accepted it for what it was, a complete non sequitur to stop him from pestering her during her nightly vigil with Eastenders.

Dan let out a sigh. “Right then, where’s Nina?”

“Upstairs, practicing her flute,” Millie replied, without dragging her eyes away from the sight of pint-sized Barbara Windsor pulling yet another man-sized pint in the Queen Vic.

“For heaven’s sakes, she’s just had a concert! Hasn’t she played enough for one day?”

“She thinks she played rubbish.”

“Oh? I thought it all sounded pretty good. Who put that idea into her head?”

Millie looked at Dan out of the side of her eyes. “Probably everybody in the orchestra, if not the school.”