Frank didn’t realize he’d nodded off until he opened his eyes the following morning. It had snowed again during the night, and everything was covered in a blinding sheet of white as far as his eye could see. Stiff and cold, he started to rise from the chair, but quickly dropped back down and cried out in pain when the shotgun slid off his lap and landed on his foot.

The door flew open, and Irena appeared with a panicked look on her bruised face.

‘What happen?’

‘It’s OK, I dropped the gun. Nothing to worry about,’ Frank said, grimacing as he leaned down to rub his injured foot.

‘He is not here?’ She looked nervously around, as if expecting the man to be hiding somewhere.

‘No one’s been near all night,’ Frank assured her, averting his gaze when he noticed that she was naked beneath the sheet she was clutching around herself. ‘If you give me a minute to get dressed, I’ll root something out for you to wear. Leave your clothes on the landing outside your room. I’ll stick them in the washer then make you some breakfast.’

Irena nodded and backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. Ignoring the pain in his foot, Frank quickly got dressed before rifling through Maureen’s wardrobe. Most of her clothes were old and far too big for his slim young visitor, but she’d lost a lot of weight in the final months, and he was pretty sure the jumper and leggings Jo had bought for her last birthday would fit Irena. Maureen had been too tired by then to even try them on, so they were brand new, and a wave of sadness washed over him when he took them out and saw that the tags were still attached. Shaking it off, he gathered up his own dirty clothes before reaching for the shotgun.

As he’d asked her to, Irena had left her skirt and blouse on the floor outside her door. Exchanging them for the new ones, Frank made his way downstairs and locked the gun away before loading the washing machine. That done, he turned the heating on to take the chill off the house, and then looked in the fridge and the cupboards in search of something for breakfast.

There wasn’t a lot to choose from, because he hadn’t bothered stopping in at the supermarket after picking up the coal the previous day, but he found a couple of eggs that passed the stand-in-water test despite being out of date, and a dig through the ice in the freezer uncovered a bag containing a few slices of bread.

Irena joined him in the kitchen as he was serving up, and she thanked him when he placed a plate in front of her.