I can’t face the vat of vegetable soup Kathleen has made, so I decide to make some toast and put on a pot of tea as well. The panacea for every ill, it seems.

Comfort food, I realise. I need comfort food.

I hear someone come into the room and turn to see Alex walk in, looking just as pale as the rest of us. He’s an attractive man, I suppose. Not my type, of course, but I can see he is handsome. Tall, thin – possibly a little too thin – with thick dark hair that he wears just long enough that it has started to curl a little at the ends. He wears glasses, a modern dark-rimmed pair, and is in need of shave. He’s not quite rugged, but he screams ‘nice guy’. He has a decent job, dresses well. He’s fairly sociable. I wonder what he sees in Heidi. How he fell in love with her. She has never had any redeeming qualities, in my eyes. Quite plain-looking, quiet, spoilt. I very much doubt he knows all about her past. I’d seen the fear flash in her eyes when I’d mentioned it earlier.

‘I was just going to get myself a glass of water,’ Alex says. ‘Heidi’s still sleeping.’

‘I’m putting on a pot of tea. Making some toast, if you’d prefer that?’

‘I think I’ve reached tea saturation levels for the day,’ he says. ‘And I grabbed a burger when I was out earlier. Walked as far as McDonald’s.’

‘Oooh, a Big Mac would hit the spot right now,’ I say with a wry smile, relieved to have just a hint of a normal conversation.

‘I’ve brought the first-aid kit back,’ he says and I notice for the first time the blue box in his hand. ‘Can I get past you to put it back in the cupboard?’

‘First-aid box? Did you hurt yourself or something?’

He sighs. ‘No, it was Heidi. She cut her hand.’

I raise an eyebrow, wonder if she’s up to her old tricks. Alex looks weary again.

‘One of the dolls in her room was smashed. She cut her hand trying to clean it up.’

I have the good grace to blush and thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice.

‘She’s very upset about it,’ he says. ‘It was one of the dolls her mother got for her.’

‘God Almighty.’ I hear Kathleen’s voice from outside of the room. ‘The man who raised her is dead and she doesn’t shed a tear, but she’s in bits about a doll. That girl! There was always a want in her.’

‘I’m sure she is upset about Joe,’ Alex stutters. ‘It’s just, you know, her link with her mother?’

‘He was a parent to her longer than her mother was,’ Kathleen declares before sitting at the table.

Alex doesn’t respond. He just looks extremely uncomfortable with her outburst.

‘Is it a bad cut?’ I ask. ‘Did you find what you needed in the first-aid box, because I can always take a run out to Sainsbury’s and pick up anything else you might need? It might do me good to get out of here for a bit.’