The waxy lampshades dip and swing as the door opens. Jimmy’s lean figure enters quickly carrying a blanketed body. Another one. And after that will come another. And the later they come, the harder it is. The longer they have been under the slurry, the quicker the decomposition once the air hits them. Now the diggers are moving through, some bodies are hurt a second time. Jimmy takes the bundle through to the vestry.

‘I’ll tell you what.’ Jimmy stands, out of breath, hands on hips, next to Harry’s station. ‘I’m not religious, but after this, I’ll never hear a bad word against the Sally Army.’

‘They’d been here twenty-four hours before we even arrived,’ says Harry, walking to the back wall for a coffin, ‘must have served hundreds of cups of tea and still going strong.’

‘You’d expect sandwiches and tea,’ Jimmy says, ‘but you know what else they’ve got?’

Harry nods. ‘Whisky.’

‘And cigarettes.’ Jimmy shakes his head.

‘Good on ’em.’ Harry carefully places the body from his trestle into the coffin. ‘Some of those miners came straight from a shift on Friday morning and haven’t stopped. And where are we now? Sunday lunchtime!’

William is suddenly ravenous. He hasn’t slept and no one has mentioned a break, though Jimmy has brought them sandwiches every so often. On a busy day at work, he might look after three bodies. Valerie was his seventh. There are now five embalming stations around him doing the same. The formaldehyde fumes he usually enjoys are intense, even with all the leaded windows tilted open to the chill day.

‘Jimmy?’ he asks. ‘Can I go and get something to eat?’

‘Surely,’ says Jimmy. ‘At the last count, there are five left to recover.’

On the way through, William glances at Valerie and notices a speck of dirt still in her index fingernail. He reaches in his pocket for his Swiss army knife, flicks open the smallest blade and, holding her hand firmly to get traction, he scrapes hard at it, wiping the black smudge from the knife onto his trousers before going at it again.

In the porch he slides his coat on and ties his scarf over his chest. With the cold air streaming through the gap under the heavy door, William hears Jimmy from the vestry.

‘Let’s hope this doesn’t screw that young man up forever. He’s a natural.’

‘Got a beautiful voice on him too,’ says Harry.

Braced against the cold, he thinks at least there’s one good thing about not having spoken to his mother for five years. He can’t even be tempted to tell her about any of this. She wouldn’t be able to bear it. He decides, with relief, that it wouldn’t help either of them to visit her when he is finished here, even if it’s the nearest he’s been to her since she left.

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