Harry sits in a basket chair opposite, watching. He seems to have made his peace with the homework situation and is inhaling the pleasant smell of the bacon situation.

‘What about her ear? There’s blood on her ear,’ he adds, pointing.

‘The end of the road, the green door,’ Virginia tells him. She moves Hazel’s head to one side, so she can clean the blood.

Hazel is surprised. How does this woman know where she lives? But she doesn’t like to speak with the woman’s face so close to her own. Instead, she looks down. Virginia’s knee is right next to hers, and her breath, smelling of toothpaste, is on her face. Hazel shifts uncomfortably. Virginia leans back.

‘There,’ she says. ‘Now, you’re to sit there until you feel better and if you still feel sick and dizzy in half an hour, I’m taking you to the walk-in.’

‘Oh no!’ Hazel jerks herself upright. ‘I can’t stay off work. They won’t like that.’

Virginia, tidying away the first aid things, ignores her.

‘Now for bacon! Here, you, lay the table.’ She opens a drawer in the white-painted dresser and jabs a finger at the boy. Harry rolls his eyes, but after a brief hesitation obeys. He drags his feet on the floor as he walks to and from the dresser drawer, putting out cutlery, but Hazel sees hunger in his eyes.

‘What do you do, for work?’ asks Virginia. She’s putting plates on the side near the Aga and laying out bread for toast. All her movements are controlled, efficient, minimising the number of times she needs to walk anywhere in this enormous room. She is used to doing this for people, thinks Hazel.

‘I’m a teaching assistant,’ she replies, ‘at the primary school. But they’ve introduced all these targets and if I don’t go in…’ She stops, not really knowing what would happen if she didn’t go in. All she does know is that she has had a lot of absences already this year, due to her anxiety and OCD, and although they were sympathetic at first, their patience is beginning to thin.

‘If you don’t go, they’ll cope,’ finishes Virginia. ‘They’ll hardly want you to go in with a head injury and faint all over the children, will they?’ And that is that.

After a few moments, the dizziness begins to subside, and Harry helps her up. They sit, the young woman, the boy and the older woman, at the huge table drinking coffee and eating bacon while the world wakes up and drifts through the open window: a milk float whines, an aeroplane drones. There is an outside smell of earth and sky and city things.