‘We can be as long as you need,’ I said, and glared at Brian. He looked at me like I were nothing. I thought he were going to spit on the carpet. He suddenly seemed tired of the game. Turned away from her and slouched back up the stairs to his wires and feathers and sharp little hooks. I hadn’t been in the tying room for months. Last time I’d gone in I’d seen nowt but bones and skulls and dead things. Birds. Foxes. Little sad skeletons of field mice and dormice and a leathery, dehydrated toad he had found on one of his expeditions. I told myself it were normal. Boys liked gruesome stuff. Liked to know how our bits fitted together and what we were made of. I told myself it were all learning. All a different form of school. And he were so clever it was good to see him using his brain for something sort of scientific. But I didn’t like the way the chemicals made his skin smell or the smell of warm, rotten meat that sometimes wafted under the door. John put a stop to it, in the end. But by then Brian had already learned enough.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ I said. ‘I’ll make tea.’

She followed me like a little girl. Stayed standing by the door until I invited her to sit down. I took her coat from her like she were an invalid. Handed her two clean towels from the drawer beneath the sink and she stood holding them as if she were a daft lass. She seemed like her batteries were running out.

‘This is Mrs Hemlock,’ I said to James. He turned and gave her a big smile.

‘From the Winslow farm? Aye, nice place that. Sorry fer yer troubles.’

I saw a tower demolished once. All dynamite and dust and three-two-one. It were like that, the way she collapsed. Something just blew in her foundations and the next thing she were sliding down onto the arm of the chair and there were tears coming out of her like she were a squeezed sponge. James looked to me as if he were watching somebody die. I shooed him out of the room like he were a chicken. I didn’t know what to do for best. She was half folded in on herself, sobbing and gulping as if she had a fever.