When she hung her knickers out to dry they blew in the wind like shopping bags; only after that they weren’t like bags at all, because I knew that Mum’s flesh had been inside them, spilling out of the sides and warming the cotton.

Over by the drawers, Kathryn stooped down and hooked the hem of the nightie around her fingers. I could just see the outline of her now. Her curvy hair and body. The tips of her breasts moving slightly as she pulled open the drawer. She sighed as her fingers rummaged through its contents. I thought how hard it must be to tell what was what in this darkness, wondered how she would choose the best pair. But I didn’t turn the light on.

She closed the drawer, letting her hips fall against it to shut it fully. I thought of the way she’d slammed the library filing cabinet closed as I watched her. Swing and slam. But this wasn’t like that at all; it wasn’t nearly as definite. She held the knickers out before her and stepped into them, one leg at a time, wobbling a bit. Then she reached into the straps of a bra and hoisted herself into it. It took a minute for her to hook herself up.

‘What about your legs?’

‘What?’

I tried to think of a word I could use that wasn’t stockings. ‘Wouldn’t you usually put something else on?’

She put her hands on her hips. ‘Howard – ’

‘You would usually be wearing something else.’

I heard her blow upwards into her fringe, as she had done on that day in the library. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘All right.’

She sat down on the opposite side of the bed as she rolled up the stockings. The mattress bounced as she leant over and came back up again, smoothing each leg with her hand, the hardness of her wedding ring rasping along the sheer fabric.

‘Bugger.’ She turned round to face me. ‘I think I’ve got a ladder.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

She blew up into her fringe again. ‘I can change them.’

‘No. Don’t do that.’

We sat on our opposite sides of the bed. I kept one cold hand on the light switch; the other lay dead under my thigh. She drummed her fingers lightly on the mattress. She was in her underwear, as she had been for Jack. I wanted to see her, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to turn the light back on.

‘I’m getting cold,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get into bed.’

‘Yes. Don’t get cold.’

She pulled back the covers and slid into the bed. Shivered.

I stood up and undressed.

We lay in bed together. The sheets felt hard, frozen. I thought I wouldn’t be able to move under the cold weight of them, but then Kathryn’s hand caught my fingers and led them over the cold expanse of the mattress and onto her breast.

I let my hands run over the pieces of fabric that covered those parts of her body, my fingers pulling on elastic, the tips of them feeling the roughness of lace, the flimsiness of nylon. She lay there, quietly breathing, as I removed it all, piece by piece, and she didn’t help me when I struggled with the hooks of her bra and her suspenders, she just let herself go loose in my arms so I could turn her whichever way I wanted and I knew she wouldn’t break, or even make a sound, as I pushed my fingers into her and called her my wife.