‘I don’t think about it,’ she said, and the answer seemed to come as a surprise to herself as much as to me. ‘I don’t think I’ve worn socks since Stefan died. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do most of the things I do. I can’t use the machine we have and I got tired of scrubbing them in the sink. It didn’t seem important.’

‘You’ll get chilblains,’ I said, relieved to be onto a subject in which I was an expert. ‘They’re horrible things. Your feet split open like they’re a sausage skin. Dad used to say you should soak your feet in a bowl of your own pee first thing in the morning, but it’s not nice, is it? Nobody wants to see their father up to his ankles in his own water. It’s not a position you want to be in when the doorbell goes.’

She gave a tiny laugh at that. Some colour appeared in her cheeks – two red circles, high on her perfect cheekbones, like you used to get on dollies.

‘I can show you how to use the washer,’ I said. ‘It just takes practice.’

She managed to keep the smile on her face. Didn’t speak again until I poured out the tea. She didn’t say how she wanted it so I put two sugars in and a splash of milk. She didn’t hold it by the handle the way I thought she would. Made a spider of her hand and held the cup by the rim, drinking through the gap between forefinger and thumb. I swear she may even have slurped.

‘Coming back to life,’ I said, and felt a little proud for having helped.

She ate two slices of apple cake. I think she didn’t know she was hungry until she took a bite. Then it was like she remembered what food was for. She kept sniffing the air, as if trying to suck John’s dinner from the oven. If I’d had it to spare I’d have offered her a plateful but John did love his liver and onions and there would have been merry hell to pay if he’d come home to find I’d given it to the pretty lass from over the river. He was a kindly soul but he worked hard and didn’t deserve to be coming home to an empty plate.

‘Can we talk about it?’ she asked, quietly. There was steam rising from her damp clothes and she was making little nervous fists with her toes. I worried she was going to wear a hole in the carpet.

‘We don’t need to,’ I said. ‘Not until the storm …’