Never once has George asked her for anything nicely or thanked her for her help. It would take too much from him, and his dignity is all he has left. Realizing that the doctor had undressed him that first morning, not Betty, had gone some way to reassuring him he had not completely lost control, but for a while it was close.

Now Betty is his alarm clock. He gets up when he hears the key turn. He ignores her greeting, but shuffles into the kitchen for the tea he knows she’ll bring to his bedside if he doesn’t rise. ‘Stay out of my bedroom.’ If he’s told her once, he’s told her a million times, but she keeps walking in anyway, a feather duster in one hand and Shake n’ Vac in the other. He used to say, ‘Stay out of my house.’ Now George just demands she stay out of specific rooms, namely his bedroom and the spare room. So far, she seems to have sensed there is no leeway on the latter, mostly because George guards it when she’s on the prowl for things to clean. After the funeral, Barbara put away all Ellen’s things in the spare room. Knowing Betty, she’d march in and come out wearing Ellen’s wedding dress, then expect George to take her for a turn round the rug.

A part of him he refuses to acknowledge feels cramp-like guilt when he sees Betty washing Ellen’s crockery. The fruit bowl they got as a wedding present from her mother. The plates with fish on them that she won in a raffle and raved over all the way home, and which she only ever used on special occasions. George wants to tell Betty to use the brown-and-white swirl ones, the everydays. He wants to tell her the posh plates belong to Ellen, but he can’t get the words out. He’d rather Betty see him naked than watch him struggling to say his wife’s name.

He tells himself that Betty isn’t quite as good a cook as Ellen. He tried to refuse her food at first, he really did. He watched fluffy scrambled eggs congeal on a fish-patterned plate for a week before giving in (okay, two days).

Ellen was a little sparrow, who pecked at her food and flitted with a quiet voice and even quieter feet through their house. Her laugh was a tinkle and she smelt of Dove soap. George wonders how something so light could weigh on him so heavily.

Now George eats his bacon sandwich in angry silence, while Betty crunches her way through a third slice of toast, slathered in Ellen’s blackberry jam. (It’s got Ellen’s name on, for fuck’s sake. Has Betty no shame?)