The voice of the radio: white, old Rhodesian, upper class, everything her grandparents hated. She turned to bawl him out, but the mud-splashed face above the orange rucksack was grinning at her, his eyes more alive than any she’d seen in here or anywhere else for that matter. She retrieved a cold beer from the fridge and handed it over. ‘On the house,’ she said. ‘Be quick.’ She came back in five minutes. ‘Finished?’

‘What’s the rush?’ He handed her the empty bottle.

‘Like I said, we’re closed.’ Then, because he was still smiling, because his rucksack was spilling books, she added, ‘I’ve got revision waiting.’

‘For?’

‘English A level, next week.’

‘Ah.’ He pulled out a book from the rucksack and put it down. Great Expectations. ‘Have you read it?’ A chat-up line, something to keep her there, he told her later. She’d loved that book so she nodded. He slapped down Middlemarch, she nodded again. They’d sat outside in the car park afterwards; he was reading English at Oxford, he told her, in his final year. They talked till dawn about the books they’d read, about their secret dreams of writing. The sun had come up hot and clear like today, the future had glittered like the cars parked beside them.

She touches the greying hair and turns away, giving him five more minutes of sleep. The kids are sprawled, eyes shut, mouths open, arms spread. After yesterday’s shift she’d come home to them sitting with glazed expressions in front of the television, sated with pizza and chips. Martin’s arms had been around each child, pretending it was a treat, not laziness.

Charley wakes at her touch and slips from the bed, a neat rush of smooth limbs. Blake falls out like a puppy, growling as he hits the ground. They know better than to argue. They fill the bathroom, elbowing each other; it’s hard to imagine that these jostling kids will grow into their names: Charley for Charlotte Brontë, her choice; Blake for William, Martin’s. She pushes them into the kitchen, watches again as they down milk, juice, Weetos.

‘Do I have to go?’ That whine, the hunched shoulders; she buries a fist into his Afro and pulls gently, forcing his face up.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

She doesn’t want to say it all over again: that a child of eleven should be writing better than his sister of nine, that he should be reading fluently by now. It’s not his fault that he’s way behind, but he has to try. She’s paid for the course that she found on Facebook, a nominal sum but hard-earned all the same.

‘Because.’ She loosens her grip and jerks her thumb at the door. ‘Dress.’

‘Can I go?’ Charley shoves Blake with her shoulder, he kicks back. Grace holds them apart.

‘Please.’ A drawn-out whine from Charley, pulling on her hand.