‘I’m fine, darling. Quite fine. Come here.’ She wraps her arms around him and he is surprised by how stiff she feels through her summer dress. ‘I’m making a rhubarb pudding,’ she says chirpily, waving towards the stove. ‘Mr Muggeridge brought up a great big trug full of lovely rhubarb from his garden, and …’ She pauses, her face quite blank.

‘Mum?’

‘Rhubarb. Steamed rhubarb pudding. You like it, don’t you? It’s one of the things you like.’

‘I … I think so. I’m sure I do,’ he adds, seeing something happen to Mum’s eyes.

‘Oh, good! Good. Oh …’ Abruptly, she folds at the waist and, hands on knees, sways gently in front of Tom, who watches, horrified. ‘Oh, damn. I’m sorry, Tommy.’

‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

She straightens, and her face is red with tears. And yet, when she speaks, her voice is clear and steady.

‘Daddy. He has left us, I’m afraid. He’s gone.’

‘Gone? What do you mean, Mum?’ Left us? ‘He isn’t … isn’t … ?’ His mother’s laugh, too loud, makes him jump.

‘Dead? Dear God, no!’ Mum sniffs angrily. ‘Your father isn’t the kind of man to just die! Not at all! Left. Tout simple. Gone.’

‘So …’ Tom finds he is fumbling in his pocket for the bag of sweets that isn’t there.

‘Gone off, that is,’ Mum continues, through lips that have gone quite white. ‘With someone. Some woman. Another woman. Another one.’

‘But he was supposed to collect me from school,’ says Tom, hearing the whine rising in his voice, finding that he doesn’t want to understand what Mum has just told him. ‘The head’s wife said he had an unavoidable engagement.’

‘Ha ha!’ His mother fumbles with the knot of her apron, throws it viciously at the table. ‘Ha! The bastard. Oh Christ …’ She sits down hard on one of the kitchen’s Windsor chairs. Tom stands in front of her, mouth wide but unable to say anything. Something rattles faintly, jauntily, in the copper on the stove. Steamed pudding. He runs out of the kitchen.