The pile of tiny coffins reaches to the ceiling. He has to stand on a chair. His slurry-coated hands slip on the wood; he can’t get enough purchase to pull it down. On tiptoe, he manages to hook one finger over the coffin’s edge. His ankles wobble as he pulls it towards him. As the white casket tilts downwards, it knocks him back and a child’s body flops out onto his chest. He hits the ground and the crushed skull nestles under his chin, the dried, bloodied hair scritch-scratching his throat. A woman kneels down, looks at the body draped over him, and starts to scream. He sits up.

The screaming continues; he feels the hot rush in and out of his lungs, Gloria’s hand on his back.

‘All right,’ Gloria whispers, sitting up too with her arm across his back, her head on his shoulder. ‘Shhh. I’m here.’ It’s him doing the screaming.

‘Sorry.’ He feels the sweat on his forehead.

She lies down and pulls him next to her, lays his head to her chest. ‘Try to sleep.’ Gloria’s breathing starts to deepen and he tries to enjoy the gentle rise and fall of her. But of course, he won’t go back to sleep. He hates that so many of her nights are disturbed like this – have been since the very beginning of their marriage.

He’s only twenty-three and already married three years. He still marvels at being loved by her. The joy of it can make him want to shout out loud. On his own, in the mortuary, he’ll find himself smiling at the very thought of her, at something funny she said at breakfast, or a kindness shown to him, or Robert, or Howard. But on nights like tonight, it’s guilt he feels, and before he can stop himself, his mind takes him back to the cold, dank phone box in the cheerless dusk after the Aberfan funerals. He said goodbye to her, resolved to forgo his own happiness for the sake of hers. He often tries to resist the memory, to walk himself out of that phone box and the conversation they’re about to have. But it’s so powerful it usually holds him hostage, like tonight, until it’s run its course.

‘Are you finished?’ she’d said.

‘Yes.’ And there was indeed a sense of being finished, his clouded breath suspended above the heavy mouthpiece.

‘Just so I’m clear’ – Gloria spoke a little louder now, as if talking herself back into being – ‘you’re saying that because of what happened to those poor children, you don’t want any of your own?’

‘You weren’t there, Gloria. The pain’s too big. I couldn’t bear it, I just couldn’t.’