‘I thought if I could make my peace with Aberfan, I might be able to make peace with myself.’ He nods his head at the stairs. ‘And her.’

‘So, whatever troubles you’ve been having’ – she leans back in the chair, crosses her legs – ‘are mixed up with what happened here?’

‘Yes,’ he says, wondering from the look on her face and the comfort of her presence why on earth he didn’t think to come and speak to her sooner. ‘I’ve had dreams, from the day I left here, and flashbacks when I’m wide awake. On the day of the funerals, I decided I couldn’t even think about having children. It was unbearable. I told Gloria, right from the start. I tried to break it off, but she wouldn’t have it.’ The teapot and mugs sit on the table between them, and a plate of biscuits with a paper doily, but they remain untouched. There’s a building pressure in him, to tell her what he’s kept locked up so tightly. She’s perfectly still, watching him, and it takes him right back to the moment she stood opposite him in the chapel vestry, waiting for him to pull back the blanket from the first child. ‘What I’ve never told anyone …’ He pauses, needing to swallow. ‘Is that if I even think about having a child, spend a few seconds imagining what it would be like, I get these images in my head of its damaged body on a morgue table and me having to embalm it. Because if I had a child and they died, I couldn’t possibly let anyone else do it, could I?’ His eyes fill and when he manages to look at Betty, he sees that so have hers. ‘I left her because I thought it was the kindest thing I could do. Let her have a life with someone else. But I didn’t know she was pregnant. I would never have left if I’d known.’

A heavy creak at the top of the stairs gets both of their attention. They look from the staircase back at each other. The long moment of silence is like a held breath, then Gloria’s footsteps move quickly across the landing, a door closes, the chain flushes, more footsteps, then silence.