And this must be – of course it must – the reason why her father hadn’t come to the house: not because he thought Claire ought to be left in peace, but because he considered his children’s emotional lives the remit of his wife, by virtue of the fact that his wife had attended more deathbeds than he could imagine.

Deathbeds was right, Claire thought. End-of-life care; terminal care; delicate duties of amelioration, and never a need to shake or discomfit, since nothing was going to change. Same here. Callum was, in a sense, already dead; or, he had never become a person, had never grasped the principle of agency, and so could never die; or, his whole life was a deathbed scene, at the end of which he would succumb with perfect resignation, never having done a thing to regret.

She looked up, expecting him to seem ghostly all of a sudden, hovering in the doorway, washed out by the watery morning sun – but he was already gone.

‘He’s late for work,’ her mother said, as if Claire hadn’t already noticed and said as much. She was using her clinical, careful tone, slipped on like a pair of gloves, meant to insulate them both from what was really going on. And this was what Claire remembered: always being handled by her mother like this, with a slick, inhuman grasp, as if Claire had been one of those poor kids with desperately compromised immune systems who spend their last days in a plastic tent screaming for a cuddle; as if her mother had known her own touch was the touch of death.

It’s a utility. It can be a glass polisher, a shock absorber, a fuel oil filter. It can make tents and hats and shin pads and washers and bumpers and beaters. Dentists use it. Saddlers use it. Silversmiths and cabinet-makers. Military engineers. It can line car boots and coffins. It can be a coffin: sustainably produced, biodegradable, tasteful felt shrouds are available from a number of independent felters and funeral homes. Lay your loved one to rest in three layers of heavy-duty British wool felt decorated with the native species of your choice. Let them soak into the fabric, its ultimate fulling.