‘So. How long then?’

‘Seven months. Eight.’

‘Pretty fucking stupid bitch of a thing to do.’

‘Red.’

‘Get my name out of your mouth.’ He stared hard at the floor.

‘Do you want me to leave?’

A tight stretch of time like holding breath. ‘No.’

They hadn’t heard her come down the stairs but suddenly there was Anouk in the middle of the room. She had taken off her nightgown and was shivering in her underwear; her hair was damp with sweat. Nora moved quickly to pick her up, the girl hot and bony in her arms. She weighed so little. Then, Red’s fingers dug deeply between the bones and tendons of Nora’s elbow, hard enough to hurt.

‘I’ll take her,’ he said, and gathered Anouk up like a doll. The only thing Nora could do was to follow them up the stairs and into Anouk’s room. Nora turned on the light. Anouk’s sheets and duvet were on the floor and the fitted sheet had been stripped from the mattress. Red looked at the bedding on the floor and he looked at Nora and then he looked away, so she picked the twisted sheet off the floor and spun it open and stretched it over the mattress. It seemed crucial now to align the corners of the sheet perfectly over the corners of the mattress. She collected the other sheet from the floor and tucked it neatly under the foot of the mattress and pulled it up to the head of the bed, smoothing it with her palms as she went, then folded the top edge back on itself, ready for Anouk. Red settled her into the bed and Nora ducked in beside him with the duvet and there was his smell, his winter skin and the grass he would have smoked earlier in the shed.

Anouk sat up, coughed wetly and spat a mouthful of sputum into the cup she kept next to her bed.

‘The cough touches my throat if I lie down,’ she said.

‘Why didn’t you call us earlier?’ Red asked, stroking the wet hair off Anouk’s forehead with his thumb. He propped the pillows behind her neck.

Nora, perched on the end of the bed, imagined she wasn’t a part of this scene.

Anouk leaned over and coughed again and this cough led to another and another, a fit lasting several minutes. Her cup was full so Red took it and left the room. Afraid to disrupt the scene, Nora watched her from the end of the bed. Red came back with a box of tissues and a new cup and a wet cloth for Anouk’s face.

‘Go to bed, Nora,’ he said, his back to her. ‘I’ll do the night.’

Nora opened the bedroom window to let in the cold air and lay in bed listening to the slow dance of wind and tree. Her heart kicked in her throat and ears, kicked so hard her whole body was exhausted. She was not going to be able to sleep tonight. In the dark she could just make out the contours of this room: Red’s clothes hanging over the back of a chair, one sock and a pair of boxers on the floor beneath it. Closet door that never shut completely and a tumble of shoes at its base. Red’s Jays hat on the bedpost, a stack of books on the bedside table. A stout, dusty candle on the bedside table too, which hadn’t been lit in years. She pulled open the table drawer and scrabbled in it for a lighter. Found one and lit the candle and it sparked, smelled of burning dust. The room became shadows and it no longer belonged to her. She wondered where was the sense of relief she thought she had coming.