‘What can I say, mother,’ I say. I raise my palms, upturned. I am vexed; I have to remind myself that there is no need to be. My mother looks at me with her bad eyes. I carry on. I tell her about the colony of moths that have settled into our bottom drawer, the one that housed Neil’s winter jumpers, the one he has vacated. It’s still empty. I don’t need the extra space; I have nothing to fill it with. I withhold the meagre satisfaction of knowing that all the expensive jumpers he took with him will be full of holes by the spring. Baby moths are breeding invisibly in their woollen folds right at this very moment.

‘Furry little turds,’ I spit out. I feel my face contract into a mean little smile.

‘Ruth,’ my mother says. She doesn’t like it when I speak like this. She waves at the chicken that sits in front of us, untouched.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘The insects must’ve crawled up the back of the wardrobe, because all my singlets on the lowest shelf had holes in them too.’

At the signal – my mother’s palm outstretched – we join our hands over the handle of the carving knife.

‘So I had to go to Oxford Street in a hurry,’ I tell my mother. ‘Because of work the next day.’

She knows that it’s freezing in the Bowl. She’s bought me singlets every Christmas since I started there. It’s her way of letting me know that she thinks of me as an adult – a sort of dowry, a motherly act she became attached to in my absence. I don’t remember wearing vests as a child. My mother seems sad to learn that the new singlets she gave me at Christmas have been ruined. I shouldn’t have told her. ‘I went and bought some more immediately,’ I try to reassure her. ‘Shops close at ten p.m. in central London. I know. Crazy.’ Together, we delve the knife into the chest of the chicken, just to the side of the breastbone. Like cutting a wedding cake, but clumsier, with the table between us. ‘I knew that the queues would be long and the cold dreadful, but the big Primark is cheap and so it still seemed worth the trip.’ A way to leave the house, something to do. I thought if I hurried perhaps I could still make it before rush hour.

‘Primark,’ says my mother – an admonition.

I shrug and then we flip the knife, left to right, left to right, to separate the two breast pouches, feeling the resistance of cooked muscle in the handle.