She was wearing a dressing gown and putting on the kettle. She turned and said: ‘Are you comfortable there?’

‘I’m fine.’

She paused. ‘I’m sorry about the noise.’

‘I can’t hear anything,’ I lied.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘No thanks.’ I wanted to go back to sleep.

Some moments passed. Then she said: ‘His father was an alcoholic.’

I paused. ‘We all like a drink.’

She didn’t reply. I heard the rattle of a cup. Her voice came from the other side of the room. ‘If Robbie died,’ she said, ‘I would die too.’

I lay still, willing her to leave. She did. I heard her footsteps on the stairs, heavier than her daughter’s.

I pulled the eiderdown over my head and dreamed that Eleni was clattering up to my coach. She wore her white boots and dragged three bull terriers behind her, on a lead. When she got to the coach she kicked them off; they fell back like skittles. I knew she was pregnant, though it didn’t show to anyone else. That’s why she had behaved like that. She got onto the driver’s seat and tried all the levers. Suddenly the engine burst into life.

I woke up. There was a noise outside the window. I pushed off the eiderdown, ran to the door and opened it.

Outside it was dark. The icy air whipped away my breath. Somebody was starting up my coach. It jerked backwards; the street was full of exhaust smoke.

I rushed round to the driver’s door and wrenched it open. Robbie sat in the seat, bent over the wheel.

‘Fuck off,’ he said.

I hadn’t wrestled since I was at school. He was smaller than me but hard and springy. His knee butted my stomach; I gasped and coughed. I slid on a Beezer and lost my balance. He grabbed me, but I pushed him away. I was suddenly terribly angry.

‘You can’t leave them,’ I shouted, ‘you stupid git!’

I slapped him across the face, feebly. He jerked back.

Then I took the key out of the ignition—I must have been drunk, to leave it there—and climbed down.

I knew he would follow. I waited at the front door; my bare legs were freezing. He passed me with his head bowed. Then he picked up his jacket, which he had never bothered to put on anyway, and went back upstairs, to his bedroom.

Eleven

The next day was so bright and ordinary I thought it had all been a dream. The children sat in a row at the table and demanded Frosties; the kitchen had been mysteriously tidied. Piff and Robbie chatted about their day. He had to go to work—he was an engineer and only minded the CND office part-time. They discussed, companionably, who was going to pick up the stuff for the freezer.

I had a monumental hangover. Last night seemed a mirage; so did Spalding. Last night Robbie had tried to run away from home; this morning his wife was ruffling his hair. I felt I was in the thick of something I couldn’t trust, like the undertow beneath the sea’s current. I hadn’t been in a proper home for so long; was this how people really behaved?