Minnie didn’t think that was a good analogy, but there was no point arguing with Dad about the clocks. The orchestra of ticks and tocks had been the soundtrack to her childhood. She and Will used to play a game where they took turns to blindfold each other, and then they’d take a clock from the wall and try to identify it by sound alone. Will called the game ‘Name That Clock’ – not an especially inventive title. The game had come to an unpleasant conclusion when Will had dropped a clock and broken one of the hands off. Minnie had never seen her dad so mad before or since.

Minnie’s mother met her in the hallway, and her eyes instantly fell to Minnie’s hair.

‘You’ve cut your hair. I thought you were growing it out?’ she said, reaching up to gently tug one of Minnie’s curls.

‘Well, I felt like a change,’ Minnie shrugged. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘If you want to grow it, it takes time, you have to persevere.’ Connie gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Your generation never stick anything out.’

‘Mum, I don’t think me getting a haircut is symptomatic of my being in the snowflake generation.’

Minnie took off her cape and hung it on one of the coat pegs in the corridor.

‘It’s like your swimming lessons all over again.’

‘Mum, you can’t still be mad at me for giving up Saturday morning swimming – I’m thirty!’

Her mother gave a little shake of the head, like a duck shaking off rainwater.

‘I spent an arm and a leg on those lessons, and you had such a talent for it, Minnie. Now, did you at least bring a pie?’

‘Was I supposed to?’

Her mother groaned.

‘Well, it’d be nice not to cook once in a while, when we’ve got a “chef” in the family.’ She said ‘chef’ the way she always said it, in a posh accent with a regal hand flourish. ‘Your dad’s just got back, been no help to anyone, and I didn’t sit down all shift. We were a nurse short on the ward, and not enough beds as usual.’ Minnie followed her mother through to the kitchen and watched her sit down on one of the kitchen chairs with a resigned sigh. ‘My poor Mr Cunningham got sent home, and he was in no fit state to go.’

‘I’m sorry you’ve had a hard day, Mum,’ said Minnie.

‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to sometimes,’ her mother said, closing her eyes. ‘How can some people have so much, and then our hospital doesn’t even have a bed for a man who just wants to pass on with a little dignity?’