She looks at me, pauses then stuffs a pair of underkecks into the inside mesh pocket. This is my cue to do something. But I’m knackered. Everything’s a blur. Tongue still tingling with toothpaste. And the music isn’t that loud, really. I could close my eyes and start to drift and maybe I do because before I know it she’s out on the landing herself, knocking louder than the beat of the song. The door opens and then I know the song because it’s the same one from the pub, the same one that’s playing everywhere. Now how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? May says something in that tone she has and Karen’s shouting. The door slams. Then silence.

‘Thanks so much for your help,’ she says, huffing back into the room. She carries on balling up pairs of socks and stuffing them into any available corner.

I want to ask her how many miles she’s walked today. I want to say why can’t you be more gentle with her? Why does every little thing have to be a full-blown drama? I want to tell her that sometimes, when they argue, she reminds me, just a little bit, of her mother.

‘You’re tired,’ I say, ‘come to bed.’

She mutters something as she zips up the cases, switches off the lamp and climbs in. We settle into the usual tangle. Her skin leaking heat, toenails scratching my shin.

‘Ow.’

‘Sorry.’

I feel her relax against me. Her hair still stiff with hairspray.

She sighs. ‘That test tube baby was born the other day,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘The first one – in Oldham. They implanted it straight into her womb.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Can you imagine?’

I can’t. I think of the baby bird I saw in spring. Fallen from the nest. The raw pinkness of it – lying there on the path neatly, inside the lines of a perfect paving slab in a pristine dead-end cul-de-sac. And then the other thing, the shrunken boy. The little one we never talk about.

‘Is it normal?’

‘What?’

‘The baby.’

‘Yes. A girl. They called her Louise.’