‘Are you watching,’ Ernestine said, ‘the creature with the head?’

‘Would have the look of a soldier,’ Kit said. ‘A squaddie.’

The Toyota stalled at traffic lights and the family passed directly in front. The ladies regarded each other dolefully.

‘A fine environment for a child,’ Ernestine said. ‘To be growing up in a house where the father has a pierced nipple.’

‘The look of drink off him as well.’

‘Oh it’s sweating out of his every pore, Kit!’

In truth, they weren’t shy themselves with the New Zealand Cabernet Sauvignon, four pounds sterling the screwtop bottle. They went through it by the crate, with the radio set to Lyric FM, the classical station, and it played late, always, into the bungalow’s night, with Ernestine leafing through her power-tool catalogues, and Kit with her small-hours glaze on, and her occasional trilling.

They went sulkily about the aisles of Asda. They filled a trolley with the wine. They bought frozen mince in five-kilo packages. They bought kitchen towel in the fattest available rolls – they went through such an amount of it. Tiredness caught up and it carried age’s taste. The migraine glare of the aisle lights was a trial, and so too was the drone and chill of the refrigeration, and so too the futile cheeps of the piped music. The day was marked by and was heavy with failure, and it was as if their luck might never change but as they neared, by fate, the customer services desk, it did. An announcement was made: a toddler had been found, and its parents should approach at once – the child was panicked.

Boldly, the chance was taken.

‘Oh my darling Allie!’

Ernestine at a dash reached the desk, and she flung herself on the child, and Kit was at her back, and she kept watch; she knew they had perhaps a minute, maximum, no matter how vast the Asda.

‘Oh thank you so much!’ Kit cried. ‘Oh thank you.’

‘Ah she’s upset, she got a wee shock, a wee shock is all …’ Ernestine soothed as the toddler continued to scream.

The customer services lady was delighted to have reunited the odd family – ‘Allie, is that her name?’ she said. ‘Pretty.’ Delighted to be rid of the screaming child, she waved them along.

Held in a firm lock by Kit’s steel-wire arms, it was a monstrously burbling infant they carried at pace across the car park – their trolley abandoned to the air-conditioned aisle. Quickly they were away, and Ernestine through the busy town gunned the Toyota.

Belcoo.

Blacklion.

Dromahair.

And now they began their descent to the midland plain, and the toddler wailed itself to a state of purple exhaustion, and it was laid on the back seat.

Kit after a time turned and eyed it coldly.

‘This is no angel,’ she said.

Ernestine consulted the rearview and tightened her lips in agreement.

‘Is it not kind of … wall-eyed, Kit?’

‘It is. And a jaundicey class of a look to it, I’d say. Once the purple clears.’