Ossie could no longer see Alf Herbert’s shovel working at the earth.

‘Never knew a man cry at a funeral,’ Councillor Hogben complained, very low, although he was ripe enough to burst.

If you could count Ossie as a man, Councillor Last suggested in a couple of noises.

But Ossie could not see or hear, only Daise, still lying on that upheaval of a bed. Seemed she must have burst a button, for her breasts stood out from her. He would never forget how they laboured against the heavy yellow morning light In the early light, the flesh turned yellow, sluggish. What’s gunna happen to me, Daisy? It’ll be decided, Os, she said, like it is for any of us. I ought to know, she said, to tell you, but give me time to rest a bit, to get me breath. Then he got down on his painful knees. He put his mouth to Daise’s neck. Her skin tasted terrible bitter. The great glistening river, to which the lad Ossie Coogan had ridden jingling down from the mountain, was slowing into thick, yellow mud. Himself an old, scabby man attempting to refresh his forehead in the last pothole.

Mr Brickie said: ‘We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world.’

‘No! No!’ Ossie protested, so choked nobody heard, though it was vehement enough in its intention.

As far as he could understand, nobody wanted to be delivered. Not him, not Daise, anyways. When you could sit together by the fire on winter nights baking potatoes under the ashes.

It took Mrs Hogben some little while to free her crêpe de Chine from the wire. It was her nerves, not to mention Meg on her mind. In the circumstances she tore herself worse, and looked up to see her child, just over there, without shame, in a rubbish tip, kissing the Whalley boy. What if Meg was another of Daise? It was in the blood, you couldn’t deny.

Mrs Hogben did not exactly call, but released some kind of noise from her extended throat. Her mouth was too full of tongue to find room for words as well.

Then Meg looked. She was smiling.

She said: ‘Yes, Mother.’

She came and got through the wire, tearing herself also a little.

Mrs Hogben said, and her teeth clicked: ‘You chose the likeliest time. Your aunt hardly in her grave. Though, of course, it is only your aunt, if anyone, to blame.’

The accusations were falling fast. Meg could not answer. Since joy had laid her open, she had forgotten how to defend herself.

‘If you were a little bit younger’ – Mrs Hogben lowered her voice because they had begun to approach the parson – ‘I’d break a stick on you, my girl.’

Meg tried to close her face, so that nobody would see inside.

‘What will they say?’ Mrs Hogben moaned. ‘What ever will happen to us?’