‘You know you can’t leave her in her cot all day,’ I snap, unbuttoning my shirt as Ma starts to sob softly on the sofa. ‘Just sit outside on the step if you can’t actually go anywhere. You can even crawl with her if you have to…’

I turn my back on her hacking and coughing as I take the two steps into the kitchen in my bra. Three cans of beans are lined up all new and shiny on the otherwise filthy counter.

‘Where did these come from?’

I peer round the doorframe as Ma blows her nose into her T-shirt.

‘Your brother came by,’ she says, pleating the rim of her shirt between her fingers. ‘He might even be back tonight, he said.’ She looks up at me, blinking like she’s the child. ‘He … he left a few things…’ She gestures into the kitchen.

I yank open the fridge door to find unopened packets of cheese and ham gleaming on the shelf. A bag of apples, a loaf of bread, even yoghurts, all stupid smiley-face labels. Yoghurts! I glare at Ma as I crouch down next to Kayleigh, spooning as fast as she can swallow. If the telly weren’t on I think she’d try and drink the stuff, she’s so hungry. And as usual I find her battered baby cup under a pile of filth in her cot and need to rinse it over a similarly filthy pile of dishes in the sink. I stare through the porthole window at the blank wall of the block opposite as water splashes over my hands. All these army houses look exactly the same from the 19outside, lined up next to each other like they’re the soldiers. But if anyone came inside this one by mistake they’d think they’d shown up on an enemy base.

I bang the cup against the counter before taking it out to Kayleigh, furious with Ma still heaped on the sofa, wrinkled and slumped like the pile of dirty washing that doesn’t even hide the holes in the carpet. She looks so close to dead that I don’t know how she can still be alive. If I stop and think about it, I reckon it started even before Kayleigh was born. She just stopped being capable, I guess. Too many scroungers will do that to you. The army thinks that paying out a dead soldier’s pension is the least it can do. In the name of God and Country, all that shit. Actually that free money just loops a bullseye around some already pathetic widow’s neck.

Cold air suddenly blasts back into the room as a key rattles in the lock and the door swings open. Too late, I remember I’m still basically naked from the waist up. I snatch up Kayleigh and cuddle her across my chest as I shiver in the shadow of my brother in the doorframe.