Brendan looked down at the food on his plate with an anger that was meant for his mother.

Joe held his schoolbag tightly under his arm and watched his father pull himself from step to step. There was nothing new in the operation, nothing even very pitiful.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ he heard Brendan say. ‘I mean here … In here. Not out beyond. You know, here.’

‘I know well,’ said his mother. ‘Nothing ever changes. It only gets worse.’

Now that Brendan was home again Joe no longer had the luxury of a room to himself. His clothes had been pushed up to one end of the press, the table by his bed was gone and the camp bed that had lain for years under his own bed had been put up across the middle of the floor. There was no floor space left, only a thin strip of worn linoleum between the two beds. His precious bowl of stones that he had kept on the table, carefully covered with water so that they would keep the shine of their colours, had been shoved on top of the cupboard. One of his blankets had been removed and was doubled neatly over on top of the camp bed … He knew, with resignation, that it would only be a matter of time before he was asked to give up his bed to Brendan. It was still dark when he woke in the morning and the room was filled with a strange smell, half sweat, half alcohol, which almost choked him. He could hear Mam moving downstairs. He got up and pulled his clothes off the end of the bed. Brendan grunted once or twice, but slept on. He definitely wouldn’t be long on that camp bed, thought Joe sourly, as he looked at the dark mound of his body, with one hand trailing on the floor. Joe tiptoed out of the room, clutching his clothes, and went down the stairs to wash in the scullery. His mother was shaking corn flakes into his bowl. The lid of the kettle rattled. It was warm, only the floor under his bare feet was cold and still wet from the scrubbing she must have given it not long before. She was wearing a brown overall on top of her work clothes and her red slippers, with white nylon fur that fluffed out over her ankles, that she had bought herself the Christmas before. She had wrapped them in Christmas paper and put them on the table beside his present, a handkerchief with her initial embroidered on it in blue thread, and the mystery parcel from Brendan. She had opened his parcel first, he remembered, and thanked him with a dry kiss on his cheek and then gingerly touched the parcel from England as if it might explode if handled roughly. It contained a tiny bottle of scent. Carefully she had unscrewed the gold lid and then pulled out a little rubber plug with the tips of her nails. She poured a dot of the liquid on to the first finger of her left hand and rubbed it behind one ear and then the other. The sweet smell reached him across the table. She pushed the stopper back into the bottle and then put the lid on. She put the tiny bottle back into its box. There were silver stars on the outside of the box and Joe hoped that she might give it to him one day to keep things in, but he didn’t think that she had ever used the scent again, just kept the unopened box on the dressing table in her room. The smell had made her seem for a few moments like a different person. After all that she had opened her own parcel.