He drew a loop around a diagonal word. ‘Who’s been murdered, then?’

‘My dad.’

The policeman glanced up and pursed his lips together. ‘By who?’

‘By my mum.’

He put his pen down. ‘That a fact,’ he said.

Stomach ache. Matty sat staring at the frayed patch of carpet in the corner of the room. The policewoman from before, when Mamma had first reported Dad being missing, had spent an hour asking lots of questions and writing some of the answers down in a little notebook with her purple biro. She had left a plate of custard creams.

Mamma would have phoned and said he was missing to distract them from the real story. He had gone to the Men’s Pond – because he had been seen there, the policewoman had said – and then he had come home and they had argued because she had said that she wanted to have sex with Sanjit, and she had hit Dad with something hard like the iron or the food mixer, in the head, and he had looked up at her, astonished, but he’d never hit her back and anyway it was too late because he already had brain damage and blood clots and was having a stroke, and he fell to the floor and died and she had got his body out of the apartment, maybe into one of the big supermarket bin bags, and it had been collected by the rubbish collectors, and she had cleaned all the blood off the kitchen floor with bleach and the next day pretended she didn’t know anything about it.

Matty only said some of this to the policewoman.

Another biscuit. It had been an hour already.

It meant that Dad had never drowned in the Pond. That the odd feeling of the water on the first visit was nothing. Imaginary.

The door opened. The policewoman was there.

And Mamma.

She was clutching her handbag, the strap stretched diagonally across her body. Strands of hair had come loose from her clips, fraying outwards. ‘We are going.’ Her voice was rigid.

Matty looked at the policewoman.

‘Come on, love,’ the policewoman said. ‘You’ve had a tiring day. Well, I have, anyway. I’d like to get off home.’ She was trying to be funny, now.

‘Matty.’ Mamma’s knuckles were white. ‘It is time to go.’

‘Take the last custard cream with you,’ said the policewoman. ‘It’ll only go to my thighs.’

‘Thank you. Say thank you,’ Mamma said to Matty.

Matty took it.

Nuclear fallout. Radioactive particles. Nothing that any hiding under a table or desk would help. The Bomb was coming straight for Flat 123a Golders Green Road and there would be no survivors.

Mamma didn’t say anything on the short walk to the flat, or as they went inside. She simply pulled back a kitchen chair for Matty to sit on, and sat opposite. No wine. She didn’t even light a cigarette.