Billy had made a pot of tea. Always until now it had been she who made tea for Billy. He had made the strong tea she kept especially for him. Thought you’d be needing it, Billy said, his hands shaking as he poured her a cup, unsure of themselves, slopping milk white onto the blue-and-white saucer. Such competent hands they had seemed to her until now, big rough knobbly countryman’s hands, reddened with work or with cold.

The boys sat in their chairs and watched.

There’s been an accident, she said. She heard herself say that as if it was someone else’s voice speaking. She didn’t know what to say next.

She remembered the bacon then, that she had put in the oven before. She grabbed the oven glove, knelt before the stove, opened the door onto smoke.

The rashers quite black, welded to the roasting tray.

The tray hot through the glove.

She dropped the tray into the sink and ran water onto it. Stood back from the steam escaping the white walls of the sink.

The boys were watching. Billy was watching.

Think I should be off now, Billy said. If that’s what you’d like, madam.

Yes, Billy. Thank you, Billy.

Boys, come to the sitting room.

Again, to the sitting room. Out of the steam and the smell of burning.

We’ll be quiet there. Let’s go into the sitting room. There’s something I need to tell you.

Richard went stiff as ice before he cried. She saw the tears rushing to freeze in his eyes. And then he went red and they melted. But Jonny showed nothing. At first she looked at his blank face and wondered if he understood. He was just seven. What did a seven-year-old understand of death? (Everything, perhaps, or nothing. Perhaps no less than a grown woman understood. He’d seen dead things after all, birds, rabbits, rats. He knew what dead things were. Simply that when a person was dead he just wasn’t any more.)

The dog had come into the room with them, crowding against their legs where they sat all three on the sofa. She had her arms around the boys and then she held the dog. She felt the dog’s warmth, and the slight shiveriness within her, smelled the world outside that she had brought to them inside. She sensed that the dog understood. The dog of course had been there.