‘I didn’t misbehave,’ Victor protested, tossing back his whisky and refilling his glass. ‘I had a slight disagreement with the landlady.’

‘You mean the landlady’s daughter,’ said Kenneth, grinning.

Connie glanced at her father again who made an apologetic face.

Victor grimaced and shrugged.

‘Scarpered then,’ said Kenneth, raising his glass. ‘Since Victor has scarpered . . . and finds himself without a home, it seems he’s the ideal candidate. Here’s to getting away with it!’

The men drank while Connie absorbed the news. She had managed to avoid Victor since he had propositioned her in the shop. It wouldn’t be as easy if he lived two floors down.

She walked towards the kitchen, feeling the men’s eyes on her. Kenneth’s stare she didn’t mind so much. He watched everyone, storing the details. Victor’s gaze, though, made her shudder. Luckily, he was still focusing on Kenneth contradicting him about what had happened with his landlady. The two of them bickered constantly.

Three dirty mugs stood in the sink and the tea strainer had been left on the side. She cleared away, burying her annoyance. The milk had been left out too and when she gave it a sniff her stomach heaved. Was it on the turn, or was it another sign? Opening the window, she took a breath.

‘Connie,’ her father called, ‘come and sit with us.’

‘All right, Dad. Just a minute.’

She breathed deeply again and looked out at the shared garden, and beyond to the grey stone church on the next road, and the graveyard that backed onto their garden, where her mother was buried. At the funeral, her heart had broken watching her father throwing a handful of dirt into the grave.

She forced her mind back to the present. To their garden, where weeds throttled the beds. The walls surrounding the lawn were patched and crumbling and smothered in ivy. There was a sprawling magnolia to the side and more trees in one corner, apple and pear, but no one bothered to pick the fruit, and every autumn it was devoured by wasps or left to rot on the ground.

Tea towels were pegged on the line. A pile of rubbish had been left in one corner. At the end, bushes obscured a section of grass. Kenneth had a rose garden and there was an old shed that leaned precariously to one side. An arched doorway had been built into the far wall as access to the churchyard, the door a heavy, studded affair. Connie avoided going that way to her mother’s grave. She disliked the shadows and sudden transition from garden to tombstones, the oldest graves broken and lopsided, as if the dead were restlessly shifting beneath the earth.