She walks to her mother’s house. It’s a long way from the station. The house she lived in with Greg and Lenny is closer. They must be back there now. She thinks of her son in his bedroom, the bedroom she and Greg had painted together. The same clouds above her head are over his too. That is all she can share with him right now.

Beth keeps her head down, not wanting to be seen. Her family home is small, wedged between two bigger ones, like an afterthought. The door is blue. It always was and always will be. Her mother will never move, never become unmoored, like her daughter did. The doorbell sounds and Beth thinks of Luke’s Star Wars chime. How it made him smile.

Her mother is expecting her, and a small suitcase where Lenny should be.

‘About bloody time, too,’ her mother says. ‘We’ve all been worried sick.’ She looks Beth up and down. ‘The state of you. You’re bones, just bones.’

Beth drops her bags and walks into her mother’s open arms. They close round her like an envelope, like unconditional love. ‘Come on in, Beth. Come home.’

George

(The king of grief)

GEORGE AND BETTY GO to see T20 cricket, the Sussex Sharks versus the Durham Jets. It’s Betty’s idea and George doesn’t like it. People wear silly hats with blue hair poking out of the bottom. Music plays between each over and there are fireworks at the end. The man sitting next to him keeps declaring he’d rather be a chicken than an egg, rather be a parrot than a carrot. It makes no sense and drives George mad, but Betty loves it and joins in, making up lines of her own: ‘I’d rather be a hat than a scarf.’

‘Stupid daft cow,’ he says to her, when she finally sits down, flushed and sweating in a too-tight shirt.

‘Shut up, Sulky Susan. It’s great fun.’

George harrumphs and refuses to join in. Instead, he keeps the scores in a little book. Dots and dashes, like Morse code. Betty talks to anyone and everyone, dragging George into conversations with people who know nothing about cricket and put him off his counting, as do the players in their bright kit. Cricketers should wear white, not these outfits like pyjamas.

Betty can’t understand it. ‘Hey, Fanny Adams, why don’t you just enjoy the game?’ she says, as another over ends and ‘Sweet Caroline’ blares out from the speakers.

‘I am enjoying it,’ George says, and discovers he means it. At some point during the last innings, he’s stopped being annoyed by the cheering and chanting.