‘Don’t answer, Bea,’ said Alex, ‘it’s a trick question.’

‘The human race are vermin,’ said Griff. ‘Some need to go, surely the weakest, and most parasitical? We need to approach these things rationally.’

‘Like Nazis,’ said Bea, falling into his trap.

‘Still in love with your student politics?’ Griff barked at her. ‘Still a lefty?’

‘There’s no useful to answer to that.’

‘I can imagine the whining that goes on amongst NHS social workers, nothing but moaning, I should think.’

‘I’m not a social worker,’ said Bea.

‘It’s the pen-pushers I blame, more than anyone.’ And he was away again, on bureaucracy, and the oppression of free enterprise.

As he talked, Liv reached into her bag beside her chair. She took out her reading glasses and shyly put them on.

Bea stopped listening, transfixed by her mother, who beneath the cover of Griff’s voice, took Alex’s hand and placed it on the table. She rolled up his sleeve and bent over his bare arm, inspecting it, tracing her fingers, inch by inch along his veins. Griff lost his audience and lost his focus. As the table fell silent Liv looked up and around them all. She was not surprised to be noticed, performing her intimate ritual. Alex sat compliant, like a person sedated.

‘Old habits die hard,’ said Liv.

She let go of his hand. He tucked it back into his body as she took his other arm gently by the wrist and rolled up that sleeve too, examining his skin from palm to bicep.

‘Mum,’ he whispered, ‘that was years ago.’

Her nails were short and glossy.

‘You’ve no idea what I go through, worrying,’ she said. She let his shirtsleeve fall, and patted it.

‘Bea!’ Griff’s voice was like a gunshot.

Bea jumped, blood pumped through her chest and up her neck.

‘Don’t look at your mother like that.’

Liv looked up. ‘What have I done? Are we supposed to pretend? I thought you would be all for openness, Bea.’

Bea picked up her empty plate, then Dan’s and Alex’s, and left the table.

‘All right?’ she heard Dan say.

She went into the kitchen and put the plates down anywhere, on the counter somewhere. They wouldn’t notice. She could take two minutes. She stood in beautiful solitude. She listened attentively to the whirr of the fridge motor, and the electric clock ticking, in minuscule, measured steps. She wanted to bolt, like a flight animal from a predator. Her heart raced. She had to grip the countertop. She breathed in, forcing herself to do it slowly. She paid attention to the smell of the chicken, resting in its tin, the grease and salt-smell in the air. She relaxed her fingers, and took air into her lungs and let it out, feet planted, back straight, and she fixed her eyes on the wall ahead of her.

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.

She concentrated on her breathing, measuring it, then the feeling of the counter under her fingers. She heard her mother laughing through the open window. Reaching over the countertop, she closed it. It was quiet now. She imagined shoving things into a bag and going. She pictured getting into the car with Dan. The engine, the tearing gravel.