Vomit, lots of it, into the kitchen bin, the nearest place. Eggshells and vegetable peelings in there, making it worse. An empty box of Christmas biscuits. The tiles were white with black veins in them, and cold. He was hovering at the door. Red socks with navy blue toe, jeans, brown belt buckle. Hem of a blue T-shirt under a black jumper. Beard, much longer than stubble, brown and sandy and grey. The lines in his face. Thin-framed glasses.

A shuddering breath. It was unfathomable.

‘Do you need a hand?’ he said, very tentatively, as if talking a suicidal person off the edge of a roof.

‘I’ve got to go.’ The bike. Bag. Cormac.

‘Go?’

There was the sound of the door. ‘Hey. Joe? Sheanna?’ A man’s voice. Blunt, concerned.

Joe held a hand up, first at Matty, then to his forehead. He went out into the hall. Two of them, speaking, the words blurring. The living room, and Sheanna’s voice mixed in with theirs.

Matty stood up again, mouth and throat acrid, as a second man came into the kitchen. It was the man who’d been with Sheanna outside the shop on Christmas Eve. Taller than Joe, more bulky and with greying reddish hair, small glasses.

Dad. Daddy.

Joe was there behind him. ‘Matty, this is Franklin.’

No breath at all. It was there, in the pit of the stomach, not coming out. A void where thoughts should be.

The man stared. Looked back at Joe. ‘This is—’ His eyebrows came together, a stern, closed expression. ‘I’m not quite clear what’s going on.’ He had an American accent.

‘Nor am I exactly,’ said Joe.

‘OK,’ Franklin said, taking a deep breath, both his hands out, big palms spread. ‘Let’s just take this one step at a time. Sheanna,’ he said to Joe. ‘Have you called the doctor?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘Joe.’ Admonishing.

‘Sorry. It’s been – quite a shock. For everyone. She’s all right. She’s talking, and that’s a good sign.’ A glance over, one that seemed to need to check that Matty was there at all. ‘That’s what you said?’

A small nod.

‘Can you come and check?’

Sheanna was propped up on cushions, the blanket round her. A glow worm. She was still quivering.

Matty knelt next to her and put palms on her socked feet, felt her hands. Her fingers were pale, but not blue anymore. ‘Warming up yet?’ It seemed like someone else’s voice, practical, nurse-like.

‘Matty got her out,’ Joe was saying, quietly, behind them.

Sheanna nodded, and jabbed several times at her feet. ‘I’m still cold there.’

‘Yeah. They’ll be last.’

Sheanna nodded seriously, over-emphatically.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Matty said, not looking up at them. ‘You should get a doctor, though. To be safe.’

‘You have to get out those clothes,’ Joe said. ‘Or you’ll be the same.’

‘I’m used to it.’