‘I see. Well, I’ll discuss it with your mother.’ Adrian noted the phrase ‘your mother’ and forced his face to stay expressionless. He wasn’t going to plead. ‘Of course, we’d like to help you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘But I’m not promising.’

Later, Irene looked back at the week following Christmas as the last few days of a vanishing world. Yet she had felt so safe, hemmed in by domesticity. Grey and windy days outside, bare trees dipping and bending, waves of rain driving across the streets, fog blurring the horizon, and the house became like a little ship safe on its moorings.

Every morning the children crept into bed with Irene and Adrian, pushing themselves into the space between them, snuggling down into the warmth, nuzzling up to them before pattering along the bare boards to the kitchen where they’d eat white bread and raspberry jam, mini pancakes with maple syrup, squabble over imaginary games, and arrange Beanie Babies in circles around the room so they stared at each other with their bright unblinking eyes. They played happy, tedious games of Monopoly, Sasha cheating when she counted out her money and Aggie crouched under the table crunching green houses and red hotels in her sharp teeth. And every evening they cuddled on the sofa in their night clothes and ate toast and Marmite while they watched videos together: The Snowman, 101 Dalmatians; the black-and-white Laurel and Hardy films that Adrian loved so much. Bowls of satsumas and branches of dates, cold turkey with baked potatoes for lunch, hot chocolate in the evenings.

A waiting time.

The day before New Year’s Eve, Adrian opened a letter from his father. It was typed and, in awkwardly formal language, it told Adrian that they felt that in all conscience they couldn’t loan Adrian the money he had asked for. After much discussion they had reached the joint conclusion that he needed to stand on his own two feet and consider his future career plan realistically. Lending him money would only postpone that, put off the inevitable, and therefore they felt it would be wrong for them to help him. They very much hoped and believed that he would understand that they had thought long and hard and that they were acting in the way they felt right.

Adrian read the letter and crumpled it into a ball in his hand.

‘Everything all right with them?’ asked Irene.

‘Seems so.’ He forced a smile. ‘They say thank you for Christmas dinner,’ he added. He stood up. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said.

‘You OK?’

‘I just need to clear my head.’

‘Take a coat, for God’s sake. You’ll catch your death.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Irene, piled high with washing, stood for a moment outside Sasha’s room and listened to her playing with her friend Jaz. She was teaching Jaz where babies come from.

‘The man puts his thingy into the woman’s hole.’