Mother and daughter had talked on for a while, mainly about Bash, Connie’s three-year-old grandson – who’d apparently sprayed the sitting room with quantities of suntan lotion while his mum was making his tea, leaving pockets of gunk in the loop pile of the sisal carpet, which Caitlin was finding impossible to get out.

Connie read after the call, finally drifting off around eleven. Devan was still not home, but Stacy sometimes had a lock-in for his mates on a Sunday night. She wasn’t worried.

The sound of her mobile woke her from a very deep sleep. Devan’s number came up on the screen, but it wasn’t her husband who spoke. ‘Connie, it’s Stacy here. Slight problem. ’Fraid your old man’s kaylied, can’t seem to stand up on his own. Thought I’d bring him home, but he doesn’t have his keys on him … I worried you wouldn’t hear the bell.’

Connie sat up. ‘God, Stacy, I’m so sorry. I’ll come and get him.’

‘It’s no bother. If you’d just open the door.’

She thanked him and tumbled out of bed, pulling her dressing gown over her pyjamas as she hurried downstairs. She saw her husband’s keys immediately, sitting on the ledge by the front door.

The following morning Devan staggered down to the kitchen around ten o’clock. Connie and Stacy had tried to give him water, then coffee, the night before, but their attempts had just met with flailing arms and angry grunts. So they’d dragged him upstairs and dropped his dead weight onto the spare bed – in what used to be Caitlin’s room. Connie, mortified at her husband’s behaviour, had thanked the publican profusely, then ripped off Devan’s trainers and wrapped him in the section of duvet not already squashed under his prone, fully clothed body. She’d spent a sleepless night worrying that he might vomit, choke and die. But she was too angry to sleep in the same room as his chain-saw snoring and make sure he didn’t. By morning she was not in the greatest of moods.

‘Hi.’ Devan slumped into a kitchen chair and eyed her cautiously as she began to unload the dishwasher on the far side of the room. When she saw him sitting there, so pathetic, so wasted, she began to slam the plates and cups onto the shelves, hurl the cutlery into the drawer, clank the pans and bang the cupboard doors shut. The cacophony made her ears sing, but she didn’t care.

Her husband didn’t flinch, however, and when she eventually shut the last cupboard door and leaned on the other side of the kitchen table, slightly out of breath and glaring at him, he gave her a sad smile.