Cleanliness – even the illusion of it – was an obsession with her now, as though the sickness were something, some lapse in hygiene, that might be hidden behind veils of scent. For an hour each morning and evening she washed herself with catlike attention in the en-suite bathroom, the only real physical work she still did. But no soaps or night creams or lavender shower gel could entirely hide what filtered out from the disasters inside of her, though nothing would ever be quite as disturbing as that first course of chemotherapy the winter of two years ago, when she had sat wrapped in picnic rugs on the sofa in the living room, alien and wretched and smelling like a child’s chemistry set. When her hair had grown again, it had sprouted brilliant white, and was now a weight of frost-coloured locks that reached to the mid-point of her back. This, she said – the one thing remaining to her she could still be vain about – was the reason she had refused more treatment when she came out of remission, and of all the people who attended on her now, it was her long-time hairdresser, Toni Cuskic, who had the greatest power to soothe. They had a new arrangement: there was no question of Alice making the twenty-minute trip into Nailsea, so once a week Toni drove out from the salon to pull her heavy brush the length of Alice’s hair, while Alice tilted her face to the light, eyes shut, smiling as she listened to the gossip from the shop. Sometimes Toni brought her poodle, Miss Sissy, a show bitch with tight black curls, and Alice would stroke the animal’s narrow skull and let it lick her wrists, until it grew bored of her and wondered off to sniff at some stain or savoury relic around the fringes of the bed.

‘Everything all right, Mum?’ He was standing just inside the door, hands in pockets, very slightly rocking on the balls of his feet.

‘Fine, dear.’

‘Need anything?’

She shook her head.

‘Sure?’

‘Thank you, dear.’

‘Cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘I’ve done the garden.’

‘Good.’

‘How about some hot milk?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You haven’t forgotten your Zopiclone?’

‘No, dear, I haven’t. Do try not to fuss.’

She frowned at him, the old headmistress again, bothered by some wittering pupil. A go-away look.

‘I’ll let you read,’ he said. ‘Look in later.’

She nodded, the movement triggering off a fit of coughing, but as he moved towards her (what was he going to do?) she waved him away and he went out, listening from the landing until she was quiet, then going slowly down the stairs, blushing from an emotion he could not quite identify.