‘I’ll put a pot of tea in the lounge.’ This was a ritual too. He’d sit in the lounge with his laptop and his books, drinking tea and eating Margaret’s biscuits. Then, because she didn’t provide evening meals, he’d go out into the street – either to the fish shop or the Coble – for his supper and come back with a few pints inside him, to sit up drinking whisky until midnight.

As she entered the basement she saw the kids were watching telly. She thought perhaps there’d been something else on and they’d changed channel when they’d heard her on the stairs. Something unsuitable. She was a control freak and wanted to know what they were watching. Sometimes she wondered if she was too strict with them. Perhaps that was why they didn’t talk to her any more. They were almost grown-up, after all. She saw the way other kids behaved, what they got away with. But she knew what she’d been like when she was young: sex and drugs and the music scene. She’d never finished her exams and she wanted better for them.

They were still in their school uniform and Kate was going to send them to change, but then she held her tongue. No sense starting an argument. Choose your battles. She’d seen that in a women’s magazine and thought it made sense.

‘Okay?’

The reply was a muffled grunt from Chloe. Then Ryan turned and gave one of his smiles that always reminded her of his father and made her stomach flip because it was like looking at a ghost.

In the kitchen Kate prepared George’s tray. A cloth, leaf tea in the pot, a cup and a strainer. Milk in a jug. Sometimes Ryan laughed at her efforts. ‘This is Mardle, Mam! You’re not in charge of the Ritz.’ And Kate knew that the kids got teased for her attempt to maintain standards – the cloth napkins at the tea table even though they were just eating pizza, her insistence on manners. But she was sure that the small things mattered, and she wanted to prepare them for the future. She wanted more for them than life in a rundown street in a rundown town. She’d known better than that herself once – her father had been an accountant with his own business, until it had fallen apart in the recession – and it still rankled that she’d ended up like this.

The lounge was empty. George would still be in his room. Kate set down the tray, switched on the gas fire and drew the curtains. The snow had blown into a small drift against the window.