Liz sat down at the kitchen table. Baby Steven fussed and mewled, but she tucked him under one arm and rocked him, using her free hand to get herself a fag and light it, occasionally moving her head back so as not to let that disgusting deformed hand touch her face.

Jess came back, huffing and puffing under the weight of the book. “Ooh, Mum, don’t smoke around J – round Steven.” She’d wanted to call the kid Joel, and still might when no-one was listening, but Liz’d put her foot down. Not giving the kid a stupid name like that. He was Steven, after Liz’s granddad. She’d have to watch the girl and listen out, come down on her if she caught her calling the kid by the wrong name. Fucking thing was probably retarded as well as deformed, like Jess herself and Dom; giving it two names’d just make things worse.

“Stop your whining.” Liz handed Baby Steven back. Jess retreated, cuddling the child. Liz scowled and slammed the target pistol down on the table. “And get that loaded.”

“But Mum –”

“But nothing. You’re doing your bit. Take a shotgun too.”

Jess grabbed a box of .22 ammunition, sat at the far end of the table and clumsily began loading the pistol.

Liz hung one of the sawn-offs around her neck on a rope sling and ground out her cigarette on the kitchen floor. “Get us a brew,” she told Jess.

The girl ran to the kettle; bullets rolled across the table. The wind roared outside. They were out in it somewhere, looking for a way in.

Six adults, if Jess and Dom counted. They’d cope. Work in pairs – one upstairs, one down. Watch and listen.

She’d grown up on Nan’s stories and loved hearing them – who didn’t like a good scare on a dark night? But if she’d ever believed, she’d stopped long before she started bleeding of a month. This wasn’t a life for the soft and dreamy – like useless bloody Jess. Christ, imagine if Liz’d been like that. She nearly had been, but her Mam’d toughened her up, mean old lush though she’d been. Least Nan’d been there; she’d been kind, and she’d had her stories to tell. But that was all they’d been; never real. Oh, Nan had claimed to have seen Them when she was young, but who’d really believed her?

But now there was Tony and how he’d died.

Her baby. Her child. No. No weakness. No –

Liz slammed a fist on the table. Jess give a little cry.

“Stop fussing,” said Liz, more harshly than she’d meant. The girl was only scared. So what? Scared doesn’t stop anything happening. You’ve got to pull it together and be ready to act.