After she’d been ditched by Malcolm, her entire attitude to life had spoiled. She’d been angry at the world again. Impulsive. Starting arguments with women at the chippie if they nudged her in the queue, saying, ‘Watch your elbows, you fat cow,’ and laughing on their way out to the street. Sitting on the railing of the bridge and spitting on the river boats that chugged below. Taking him to see a film and making them change seats five times, cackling at lines that weren’t intended to be funny, booing actors she resented from their roles in other films. If she couldn’t aim her anger at the person who had injured her, she’d dole it out to anyone who wandered by. She’d be quiet, preoccupied and dour one minute, giddy and belligerent the next. And he’d reached the point when, after a few weekends of endurance, he’d told her that he didn’t want to visit her again: ‘Not if this is how you’re going to act – it’s giving me an ulcer.’ She’d thumbed away her tears before they’d spilled and said, ‘OK, then, suit yourself.’ The bus had rolled up to the shelter and she’d put him on it, waving at him from the pavement, glossy-eyed, until it moved. But the next weekend – his first in Borough Green for months – he couldn’t bear his aunty’s sanctimony, how she’d lingered on the threshold between rooms observing him, as though he were a trophy earned by perseverance; and the way that she’d paraded him round church on Sunday morning with her gloved hand pulling at his elbow, basking in the admiration of her friends, who’d said, ‘It’s nice to see you back where you belong,’ and ‘Well done, Helen, bringing this one home,’ and ‘Don’t you make a handsome pair?’ Worse than that, she’d told the vicar, ‘Yes, we knew it wouldn’t take him long to see the light.’ That ‘we’ had riled him. He’d ducked out of the service early, claiming nature’s call, and gone down to the phone box at the far end of the lane to reach his sister. Right away, he’d said, ‘You know what? Come to think of it, I’d rather have an ulcer.’ She’d laughed. ‘Next Friday, then?’ she’d said. ‘Next Friday,’ he’d replied, and put the phone down.

Looking at her now, he couldn’t tell if she was still awake. He cued up an orchestral record Mr Mayhood liked. ‘Carissima’. No movement from his sister. Not a word. The music was so soothing and melodious. He went and took the tumbler from her clutches.

‘Oi,’ she said, ‘I’m not done yet,’ but her grip was very loose and she turned over, nestling into the cushions. ‘Play this one again. It feels as though I’m in a film.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘a proper weepy.’

She was shivering a bit, so wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket. ‘I do feel bad for him, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Kimball.’

‘Why?’

‘He thinks that I don’t like him.’