Back at the house Niall leans on the counter by the oven and thinks of Christine using it for her bakes. They inherited the house from his childless uncle when he died of a heart attack. Her relatives from the west coast were always sending her things for the house. He decided it was why she seemed to get away with so much, the way she was comfortable with being indulged. It gave her an unshakable confidence but there were times he loved her for it.

He remembers how mesmerized he had been that first day they spent together after meeting at the grocer’s. How she took his calloused hand in hers and traced his dry palm with her little fingers. The way, without blinking, she looked into his eyes and told him he had experienced trauma but that he had a good handle on his emotions. It was the first time they touched. He laughed and clasped his hand over hers and looked into her ice-blue eyes. ‘That’s not true,’ he said and kissed her.

He doesn’t speak to her family, only exchanging a few emails when Christine’s mother Lillith passed away last June. Every December a Christmas card used to arrive for Lauren, but there would be nothing for him. He always meant to take Lauren to visit her grandmother but he never managed to. He told himself that work was getting in the way and then it was too late. Deep down, he was scared there was too much suspicion hanging in the air, which kept him awake at night.

Standing on a Shaker chair he has made himself, he unsticks a thick recipe book called Cooking Up a Storm! from the top of a kitchen cupboard.

He fishes out his well-thumbed graph-paper notebook, filled with precise, pencilled measurements of flooring and cabinets. Biting his lip, he copies down a list of ingredients.

The supermarket, a Co-op, is twenty-three miles away, in the town of Duthac. Lauren loves their trips to buy food and he feels a strange guilt going there without her. There is something about the abundance, the neat arrangement of perfect vegetables, the brightly lit aisles of magazines, cleaning products, toiletries, and the choices offered. The synthetic smell of baking. She loves the supermarket café, or rather canteen: its chairs attached to tables with iron tubing; the yellow glow from the metal serving hatch; the steam of overheated meat and swirls of Danish pastries; the comforting smell of the coffee machine. On Saturday mornings in mid-winter father and daughter will sit with steaming drinks looking out at the snow.