Yes, Lee was doing his absolute best here. But in that half an hour he’d already made two attempts to solve this potentially life-altering problem with toast, and it wasn’t even made right. Although he should know by now how thinly she liked the butter spread, he had – as ever – slammed it onto the bread like someone painting a house. And his bed-hair was all spiky like a cockatoo, and he kept muttering ‘oh, bollocks’ as he misdialled James’s fiddly number, in vain. All in all, the more he bustled about like the emergency services, the more he demonstrated that he was in her corner, the tighter that corner was starting to feel to Jean. As he hung up the receiver once more, Jean heard herself say something she would have thought hugely unlikely not even twelve hours ago.

‘I think we should use your mobile.’

Lee scratched his head. ‘It’ll be the same, love, if the call isn’t connecting.’ His voice, roused from sleep and warming up slowly like the engine of his weary old car, was even more growly than usual, the Pennines accent even flintier. He sounded like someone reading a Ted Hughes poem on the radio. ‘No matter what phone we used, if it’s not connecting, you can’t …’

‘No, but we could send him a text.’ Jean still wasn’t quite up to using ‘text’ as a verb. She remembered being quietly crushed at how amused the children were when she called it ‘The Facebook’. The children. One of the children needed her. The thought was cold on her skin, and it pushed her forward. It wasn’t as if she had anything against mobile phones, was it? It wasn’t even a ‘complex’ about technology, as Sal liked to insist. It was just that Jean had been left behind, and without Alan she didn’t have the energy to take to new things so easily. But now, in this upturned snow-globe of a night, now that just sounded like an excuse.

‘Perhaps for some reason he can only get texts. Perhaps if we text him. Where’s your mobile, Lee?’