Matty looked at the floor, imagining the two flowers and the yellow-and-black flag pieced back together. Barnet FC, the mug that Dad had his coffee in every morning. ‘Bunch of feckin’ losers,’ he’d say. ‘I could play better on a two-day hangover. Bloody Bungle and his pals could play better.’ Yet he still went, every fortnight.

Mamma was in her silk blouse, the one with the high frilly collar and the buttons in the same material.

‘Are you going to work?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and the word felt dangerous. ‘I am going to work.’ Her voice had begun to rise. ‘Someone has to earn a living to pay for this flat, and what is in the fridge, and these bloody bastard mugs,’ she almost shouted to the handle, as if it could hear her. ‘Pezzo di merda.’

Matty put some bread in the toaster and listened to Mamma’s breath come hard through her nose, like a horse, and how it softened again, almost reluctantly. She got the dustpan and brush from under the sink. The clink of the broken china.

Mamma took out some chocolate spread from the cupboard and put it on the table, before placing her fingers on Matty’s arm, over the holly scratches. ‘What have you been doing to yourself?’

‘Nothing. Just the park.’

One long breath, and her voice was calmer. ‘Why do you not play with Johanna? She is a nice girl. Why do you not have her round for tea?’

Because you are not making tea, thought Matty. Because I can only cook baked beans. Although Mamma was spreading margarine on the toast right now, the knife heavy on the bread, as if trying to hurt it.

Dad called her the Queen of the Kitchen, and said there was no point in him bothering. He could mostly do fried things. Bacon sandwiches, pressing the bread down with the slice. Fried eggs and fried bread on Sunday mornings before church, sometimes still in pyjamas, saying, ‘God’s giving me a lie-in.’ Pancakes, scraping the bits off the floor after a failed flip without missing a note of the tune he was whistling. The kitchen seemed so empty without him.

‘Go and play with Johanna,’ Mamma said, again. ‘Stop getting filthy in the park.’

***

Johanna was at the door, giving Matty’s shorts and T-shirt a quick glance up and down. ‘Wish I could wear clothes like that,’ she said, a little impishness in with the envy.

She was wearing a crisp white shirt, the arms ironed so that there was a little ridge all the way from shoulder to wrist. A black skirt a bit like the policewoman’s. Thick black tights. Jewish people had their own school uniform for the holidays.