Ben felt his stomach tighten. For a second, he thought he was going to be sick, and he looked to see if the fridge door had fallen open again and released the nauseous smell into the room. After the death of their mother, there surely couldn’t be more bad news already. But he could read a lot into one word from his brother.

‘What is it? Something wrong with one of the girls?’

‘No, they’re fine,’ said Matt. ‘Well, I think so.’

‘You’re not making much sense, Matt.’

‘Look, Ben, I’ve made an appointment to go into the surgery on Friday. I want to talk to Dr Joyce. And if necessary, I’ll ask to see the specialist who treated Mum.’

‘Why? We know what happened to her – it was a series of strokes. It happens all the time in people of her age.’

‘I don’t mean the strokes. I mean the other problem.’

The family had rarely referred to Isabel Cooper’s condition by name. For a long time, it had been ‘Mum’s problem’. Towards the end, before she died in Edendale District General from a brain haemorrhage, it had become ‘the other problem’. Now, it seemed to Ben there was no point in trying to avoid spelling it out. Mum wasn’t around any more to be upset if it inadvertently slipped out in her presence.

‘Oh, the schizophrenia.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t understand, Matt. What do you want to find out that we don’t already know?’

‘I can’t talk to you about it on the phone – it’s too complicated. Can you come over some time? I’ve got a lot of stuff to show you.’

‘Well, I’m going to be a bit busy this week –’

‘So what’s new?’

‘All right, what if I call at the farm tonight when I come off duty?’

‘That’ll do.’

‘See you, then.’

Cooper put out a bowl of cat food and placed it on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. Randy was an animal with a fixed routine and firm ideas about his territory.

Then he went back to the fridge, took a deep breath and eased open the door. He scooped out some rotten tomatoes, half a carton of sour milk, and a wedge of Stilton with its blue veins blossoming into a furry carpet. They all went into a plastic bin liner. He wasn’t sure any of the items accounted for the smell, though. Poking in the salad tray at the bottom of the main compartment, he found a liquefied lettuce, which probably did.

When he’d got rid of the worst, he tied up the bin liner and put it to one side. Now he ought to remove everything else from the fridge and give it a good clean. Probably it could do with defrosting, too.