It was common practice in those days to keep an envelope full of your important bits and pieces somewhere safe – just in case you suddenly upped and died. It was just manners, really, and a way of ensuring nobody went through your things after you’d gone and made snidey remarks about the dust on the top of the wardrobe. It never contained very much, as a rule. Maybe an insurance policy, if you had one. A copy of your will. Deeds to your house, if you owned it, and Fairfax did. Maybe even a letter, if you’d had the courage to write one. Always seemed a bit ghoulish to me, that. How would you even start it? The devil in me always thought it would be fun to leave a note just saying: ‘Dear Snooper – I’m standing right behind you’, though I never told anybody that as they would have thought me awful.

Anyways, Janet was moaning. Wittering on. Mumbling about not having the time for this and how she were never that fond of the nosy old bugger anyway. Janet had a good soul but there were limits to how long her acts of charity would last. She had a habit of losing patience without any prior warning. One wet Sunday she’d thrown a carving fork at her eldest son while washing the dishes, just because he’d asked her one too many times whether she knew where something was. It had stuck in the wall beside his head, juddering like a terrier’s tail. Then she’d gone back to cleaning the pots. The holes were still in the kitchen wall. She wouldn’t paper over them. Liked them to serve as a reminder to her husband and bairns that their mam could only be pushed so far.

We worked in silence for a couple of hours or more. We heard wind and rain battering the windows and the roof. It had been damn ugly as we crossed the road. Sky was grey and purple. Put me in a mind of trout just out the freezer; stiff and sad and dead.

‘Church will need a new warden,’ said Janet, while she pushed stuff about half-heartedly and watched me work. Never was subtle, our Janet. Even at school she had a way of asking questions that made you feel like she had you in thumbscrews.

‘Don’t think there were much wardening involved,’ I said, on my knees by the sofa, sifting through a great stack of crinkly yellow copies of the Hexham Courant.

‘Title’s important though,’ said Janet. ‘You think your John might like it?’

‘He’s busy enough,’ I said. ‘Not really a one for church anyways. And it’s a job for somebody from Denton. Gilsland at a push. He’s Brampton.’