Surely you couldn’t talk someone out of doing away with themselves by sending a load of texts. Surely if he was serious, it was already too late. But Lee couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it, even now. He’d only met James a few times and the bloke had seemed cheerful enough, if a bit of a mumbler. At Christmas he had been a bit quiet, perhaps, and looked too warm all the time – Jean had had the heating cranked up, in preparation, since about the first of October. And he’d sidestepped a lot of the conversation, even Lee had noticed that. But none of that was enough to make you think things were this badly awry. Of course, you couldn’t tell. Lee remembered, way back, when his Geography teacher had put his head in the oven only five days after his wife won a beauty pageant in Wigan. And that was before they’d had mental health and all this business. No, you couldn’t tell anything about other people. You just had to listen, he supposed. He crunched his toast and thought about going downstairs for another round.

*

Jean was looking at the wallpaper: the pattern of tiny little silver dandelions. She was so beautiful, thought Lee, levering himself – nimble, spider-like as usual – into the gap next to her on the stairs. He touched her elbow. There was a silence; or rather, there had already been a silence, but now that there were two of them it felt like a formal one.

He cleared his throat. ‘No joy with the internet, I’m afraid. I do think we – you – but I mean, I’ll do it – we should look into the options, because there are better ones out there. Donal pays about fifteen pounds a month and his grandkids are never off the internet watching these rappers, and they gave him a free voucher for a balloon ride, only they’ve not actually gone in a balloon because his wife gets the heebies even going out on the balcony.’ It was too many words, far more than he’d intended, and anyway Jean didn’t seem to be listening. She was twirling a strand of hair around her finger, concentrating intently on the sight of it.

‘I think when this is all over, and James is all right,’ said Jean, ‘I think perhaps I might see someone.’

Lee scratched his chin. He gnawed a bit on his stubby nails. He scratched his hair, which since the shower had been sitting like soggy cereal on his head. He swallowed, and tasted the toast.

‘Someone – instead of me, love?’