Patience cooks dinner, fishcakes and broccoli, all acceptable, but then the fishcakes are already made up. Afterwards it’s time for the one soap that Jacqueline can bear. Claire never watches it with her – she says it rots her brain, as if she’d never watched all those stupid teen programmes when she was still at home! – but Patience does.

‘I can’t imagine what you’ll get from it,’ Jacqueline says. ‘I need a bit of drama, stuck in here all day. What use is it to you?’

‘I am interested in what interests you.’

‘Suit yourself. I can’t stand this woman—’ she points at the screen ‘—this woman here, Christina. Her husband’s having an affair and she doesn’t even know. It’s so obvious!’

Jacqueline accepts her glass of wine in time for the news. It makes the headlines bearable. ‘Look at the state of it,’ she says. ‘Nothing but crooks, the lot of them, murderers and crooks, and nobody staying where they ought to be, just buggering up their own countries then coming over here.’

‘Migration has certainly increased in the last five years,’ Patience says, ‘but did you know that emigration from the UK to other countries has grown three hundred per cent?’

‘There’s something wrong with you, I think, if you can’t make a life for yourself in your own country.’

‘But Jacqueline, your son has emigrated to Hong Kong.’

‘They needed him. He was offered a job. He didn’t just turn up on the doorstep without a penny to his name.’

‘I think you are confusing immigrants with refugees. Immigrants make a rational choice to leave their home countries. Refugees are driven out by conflict or persecution, in fear of their lives.’

‘Call it what you like, it’s all about money at the end of the day.’

‘Extreme poverty may be a factor.’

‘Poverty! Like there’s not any poverty here. Aren’t I living in poverty? All I own’s this house, and what use is that to me?’

Claire would have lost her temper by now. She would have got up on her high horse about how her mother’s home ownership meant that she wasn’t allowed to voice her opinions any more. Never mind that Claire had bought a flat and still forced her opinions down everybody’s throats. Apparently, if you’re talking against your own, it’s allowed. She once stormed out of the house and didn’t come back for two days. But Patience just watches the news, or pretends to.

‘What will you do?’ Jacqueline asks when it’s time for bed. ‘Will you sleep?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

Patience offers to help Jacqueline up the stairs, as if Jacqueline is a cripple, as if she can’t manage her own house.

‘You must be joking. Do you joke?’

‘I joke.’

‘Let’s crack it out, then, shall we? Sooner rather than later.’