‘Go on,’ she sighs. ‘And this better not start with you complaining I didn’t call you back either. I got your text. Grown women don’t have to check in with their grown-up children.’ She stares at the crumbs my biscuit just made, and like the boy I’ll always be to her, I pick them up and eat them, saving the newly vacuumed floor. ‘Have you been on the shake ’n’ vac again Mum?’ I don’t need her answer, the smell of it hangs heavy in the air: vanilla. ‘With that, bleach and hand cream, it’s like an impeccably clean tart’s handbag around here,’ I tease.

‘Stop changing the bloody subject and tell me about it,’ she snips.

‘Okay. So, I went to Mrs Johnson’s—’

Sharp intake of breath. ‘Has she been flirting again? I swear that woman’s obsessed. It’s since she moved up to that house, you know. She weren’t like that when she lived next door. It’s as if living in a semi up the posh end of town has turned her into a nympho or something. She’s gone crazy with the power.’ Mum all but utches up her chest. ‘I just don’t get her anymore.’ She shakes her head in dismay.

‘I don’t care to think about Paul’s mum and her appetite for sex, thank you very much,’ I shudder. ‘No, I was doing something with her U-bend and—’

‘Was it clean?’

‘Was what clean?’

‘Her U-bend. I heard she has a cleaner now! Very la-di-da.’

‘Mum!’

It’s this gossiping and curtain twitching that reminds me why I moved out in the first place. I hated it then, and I still do now. I think it’s a distraction, a displacement even, and it’s the only reason she still has nets. Bright, white lace to hide behind as she noses on everyone else’s business. ‘So, my phone goes,’ I explain. ‘But I didn’t get to it in time. Anyway, there’s a message left on my voicemail, a nurse, telling me they’d got some woman in hospital with them.’

Another sharp intake of breath from Mum suggests she is beginning to enjoy the prospect of a drama. ‘Go on,’ she encourages. ‘Obviously, since we haven’t spoken since yesterday afternoon, I assumed it was you. I panicked and legged it over there—’

‘I hope you drove carefully, Rhys Desmond Woods.’ I hate it when she uses my full name. ‘There’s no use killing yourself just to get to me. It’s no secret your van is a death trap.’

‘Well, it wasn’t you, was it?’

‘No, course it wasn’t.’ She coughs. ‘I’ve been here all day.’

‘Didn’t know that though, did I, Mum?’ I throw her a look, then dodge the clip around my ear as she moves to straighten out the side table. ‘All I knew was they had a woman in hospital and I hadn’t been able to get hold of you all night again. Can’t you at least text me when you go to bed? Or get up? Or both?’