She watched him standing there in T-shirt and boxers, holding his neck and looking down at the baby’s clothes scattered across their bed. He saw her behind him in the full-length mirror. She put her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his shoulder. They shut their eyes and swayed on the spot. As if nothing was happening.

‘We must be out of our minds.’ He broke their embrace and turned to face her. ‘We’re doing okay.’

‘How can you say that with a straight face? Are you forgetting how much debt we’re in? We had our house repossessed, our first home. You’ve got a month left on the job you’re on and then what, another six-month contract and you’re out on your arse again?’

‘I’ll find something else.’

‘What about me? You think I’m happy emptying bins and cleaning toilets? You said so yourself, you can’t take being bounced from pillar to post any more. Well, neither can I. It’s demeaning. Our lives are built on sand. That money is stability.’

‘We can’t do this.’

‘You can’t work on building sites, living hand-to-mouth all your life. You can’t do it. I know I can’t. Not for the next thirty-five years.’ Her eyes sharpened. ‘Scum take what they want. Maybe now and then, we should stop being so pathetically nice and take 18what we want. You know what the worst thing is about having no money? It isn’t that you don’t own things, it’s that you don’t own yourself.’

He looked at her with an expression of anxiety and confusion that left her stomach cold. Her eyes softened.

‘Look, that money’s a lifeline,’ she said. ‘Think what we can do with it. Debt gone, like that. We could put her in a good school. Private health care. I could start my own photography business. You could go to college or do whatever you want. We could buy a house again instead of pissing our money down the drain renting. We could start again, Liam, start properly.’

She took his cold hands and kissed them.

‘Do you want to slave away for some boss for the rest of your life who drives a car worth more than people’s houses?’ she said. ‘Do you want to spend every waking hour worried out of your mind about money? Having a fit every time a bill arrives or the van breaks down or she needs new clothes. Do you want her to grow up like us? Slaves with no opportunities. Grinding away in thankless jobs for rich pricks and then numbing ourselves to death in front of the telly. Is that what you want?’

She didn’t give him time to answer because she knew he could be persuaded. He just needed a push.