‘Not a very thorough snoop, are you?’ his Aunt Calypso mocked. He heard her go into her bathroom and turn on the taps; above the sound of rushing water he heard her voice. ‘She rents her loft.’ There was no time, thought Martin dismally as he wound Elastoplast round his thumb, to investigate Calypso’s hint. He must leave for the States.

‘Pull, for crissakes,’ Claud yelled, ‘pull.’

‘I think—I am—doing—my guts—an injury.’

Mavis heaved at the belt of webbing strung under the calor gas heater. ‘We must get it up before Mum comes in,’ she gasped. ‘She’s terrified of fire.’

On the ladder Claud got his shoulder under the stove and gave it a final heave through the trap-door. The stove toppled over, knocking Mavis onto her back. Claud came up through the trap, righted the stove and trundled it into place on its castors. His legs trembled from the strain of lifting. ‘Now the place looks civilised,’ he said, looking at his arrangement of books, typewriter, the box of manuscript, biros, pencils, india rubber, ruler, dictionary, paper clips. ‘Ready for the off,’ he said. ‘If I type out my two paragraphs and sixteen sentences again, I can carry on from there. Brilliant.’ He stood looking at his new domain and wound the belt of webbing round his fist. ‘Where does this come from?’ He looked down at Mavis flopped on the floor.

‘I borrowed it from the undertaker.’

‘Oh.’ Claud laid the webbing down quickly. How many coffins had this webbing abandoned to the worms? ‘Oh—’

‘I’m exhausted.’ Mavis rolled off her back, crawled to the mattress and sank onto it. ‘Oof,’ she said, ‘this is comfortable.’ She still wore her overcoat. She lay and watched Claud light the stove. ‘If you shut the trap-door,’ she said, ‘we can see how long it takes to warm the loft.’

‘Did Laura have one of these up here?’ Claud shut the trap-door.

‘She had an electric fire. She ran a flex down into the room below; Mum wasn’t pleased when she found out.’

‘Does she come up here?’ Claud shrank from the thought of invasion by Mrs Kennedy.

‘No, but she noticed when her electricity bill shot up.’

‘Well, that won’t happen with this.’ Claud patted the gas stove. ‘Did Laura have to repay your mother?’

‘I can’t remember. Hey, it would have been much easier to get that stove up without the cylinder.’ Mavis chirrupped with laughter.

‘Now she tells me.’ Claud stood looking down at Mavis on her back on the bed, Laura’s bed, the one she had left here. He rather envied Laura’s theft of electricity, tried to imagine Laura on the bed, but it was Mavis there showing her bright teeth, eyes half closed, muffled in that bloody coat. She had dark lashes and eyebrows, he noticed; if they had been pale like many redheads, it would have put paid to her looks. He sat beside her on the bed. ‘Why do you keep your coat on?’