‘I used to paint nails for my uncle in the morgue.’ He’d never offer this to a normal girl, but he’s confident she’ll understand. The risk pays off.

‘I did too!’ She grins. ‘For Dad. I loved it! Especially how when you hook their hands over the edge of the coffin they don’t budge an inch.’ She laughs. ‘I used to think it meant they really wanted it doing, the way their hand just stayed put. I was only thirteen.’

‘I was fourteen,’ he says, and they laugh again. ‘Actually, that’s still my favourite bit; the cosmetology.’ Encouraged by her warm delight in anything he says, he confesses, ‘I love it all: hair, make-up, nails.’

‘Maybe you should be a beautician.’

‘No.’ He laughs. ‘It’s after we’ve gone through all the other stuff, I like being able to say it’s all over now, we’re just going to make you lovely for your family.’

Gloria stretches her leg out to gently kick his shin. ‘You’re a talker, then. Dad natters his way through an embalming.’

‘So does my uncle,’ William says. ‘He tells them about the weather. I tend to stick to explaining what I’m doing.’

She tilts her head and a thick curtain of auburn hair falls across half her face. ‘What, everything?’

‘I sing during those bits.’

Her laughter is kind and William couldn’t feel more pleased with himself as he goes up to bed an hour later.

▪ ▪ ▪

As early autumn had taken hold in Sutton Coldfield, William discovered that he found the presence of the dead calming, and the sight of his uncle quietly, skilfully looking after them equally so. He had five more weeks until half-term and his move to Swansea, but he found the more time he spent in the morgue, the more he liked it. There was a relief in looking at a corpse; nothing more could hurt them. Nothing more could be done or said. He’d yet to see a dead body that didn’t look peaceful.

He was relieved to find he didn’t mind the visceral nature of it either, wasn’t at all squeamish when the sharp trocar pierced a heart, or stomach or lungs, to drain off the fluid. He didn’t have to look away when the needle went through the roof of a mouth and into the nostril to keep the jaw from hanging open.

He couldn’t help but register the intrusive and, yes, even though done by his gentle uncle, the violent nature of some of it. So once the P for packing (which, he was shocked to discover, meant shoving wodges of cotton into every orifice) was done, and they got to the H and C, he felt a sense of relief. It had quickly become very natural, standing next to Robert, to say, ‘All done now, Stanley,’ or June, or Terrence, ‘all finished.’