Thomas sat in the corridor on a hard chair and listened to Moira opening the front door downstairs. She had a bit of trouble, tried the wrong lock twice and finally, fitting the key in and turning it, the door fell open and she stood there for a moment. “Hello? Anyone?”

Thomas let her wait. “Up here,” he said quietly.

“Thomas?” She came to the bottom of the stairs. “Thomas? Are you there?”

As she approached he felt the hairs rise on his arms, on his neck.

“Tom?” She was smiling, as if it was a game of hide and seek, coming to the bottom of the stairs. “Hello-ho?”

They were both still, Thomas on the hard chair outside Ella’s open door, Moira at the bottom of the stairs. She shifted and he heard a small brittle noise amplified by the stairwell, the light crumple of tissue paper. Tissue paper in a bag.

“Up here,” he said, his voice flat.

“Oh.” She took a tentative step, wary because of his tone, because he hadn’t moved to where she could see him, because she sensed the fury in his voice. But still she came and he heard the soft whisper of tissue shifting in a bag as she took the stairs, and she muttered as she came, “Good heavens, the traffic was terrible in the town.” And “These stairs seem to get steeper every time…” making pleasant conversation, willfully pretending that they were happy friends having a jolly little fucking conversation.

She arrived at the top of the stairs and saw him sitting sentry outside Ella’s door. She was carrying a bushel of bags, cardboard with ribbon handles, from posh clothes shops. She saw him look at them.

“For the funeral.”

He said nothing.

“Sales…my own money…”

Thomas looked away and folded his arms. She didn’t move, shifted her hips awkwardly, opened her mouth to speak but drew a blank and tittered nervously as she glanced at her bedroom door. She wanted to go to her room and try on her new things, he knew that, but she was afraid to pass him.

“Have you been there long…?”

Thomas turned to look at her. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

She flinched at his tone and his manner, looked hurt, raised a shoulder against him. “Your father’s funeral…”

“She’s suicidal, Moira. You went out and left her here with me.”

Moira dropped the bags to the floor. “Tom, you don’t know—”

“I shouldn’t be left in charge of her.” He was shouting now, and glad he was shouting, enjoying the release.

“Darling, you don’t know the first thing about it.”

“You’re right, you stupid bitch.” He rose to his feet. “The doctor’s here, I know nothing about her condition, I’m talking to him like a prize prick. How the fuck do I look?” They both froze at that. It was Lars’s phrase. Thomas should have stopped there but shame propelled him on, “What kind of fucking mother are you?”

“I had to arrange your father’s funeral, my husband’s funeral!” She was tearful, stuck at the head of the stairs, the bags at her feet wilting onto their sides from the weight of the contents and he saw her do what she always did when she argued with Lars: roll her shoulders inwards, her head drooping to her chest. She was making him the bad guy.

He stomped over to her. “I couldn’t even phone you—”

But she turned to face him, tears streaming down her face, her voice whiny. “Imagine how I feel, Tommy: I’m in an undertakers’, with people looking at me, they know who I am, and then he calls the desk and asks for me.”

“I haven’t got a mobile number—”

“Why?” she shouted, flailing her arms wide. “Why? Why haven’t you got a mobile number for me? Because I had to throw my mobiles away. Journalists were phoning every minute. I can’t even have a mobile. How do you think that feels?”

He was close to her now, and he saw how near to the edge of the step her heels were, how far she had to fall. “It didn’t occur to you in your tiny mind that you could just have not answered when journalists called? It says ‘unknown’ when someone you don’t know calls. You don’t have to throw the whole fucking phone away.”

Moira glanced at her feet, was suddenly aware of the drop behind her, looked accusingly at Thomas who had stopped three feet away, and turned her back to the wall.

They glared at each other, Thomas leaning forward, making himself the predator, Moira feeling behind her for the wall, face turned away.

“What’s the fucking point of you?” he said, giving her the cue to run.

Moira covered her face, splaying her fingers so she could see, and turned to run downstairs, but the clothes bags were about her feet and her heel pierced a thick blue ribbon handle, becoming entangled, making her stagger unsteadily.

“Thomas?” A small voice behind him, Ella, not even on the landing but half in the doorway, keeping covered. She was still wearing the clothes from yesterday, still had sticky pink and white smears of marshmallow stuck to the front of her T-shirt. She watched Moira slip and tumble, her arms sliding down the wall, fingers flexing, looking for purchase.

Thomas spun back to a dull thud. Moira was on the floor in front of him, splayed on her side, the ribbon handle on the bag still skewered on her heel, the bag gaping crazily.

Black tissue ripped with a hiss and a pair of brown leather trousers dropped out, slowly unfolding as they cartwheeled down the staircase and came to a stop.

An alarm sounded, the soft, gentle trilling of the house phone, like the end of a round in a genteel boxing match.

Moira pulled herself upright and looked down the hall to her bedroom. “If that’s the doctor, I’m not in.”

Ella looked to Thomas, one eye visible, pleading with him as she hung on to the door frame.

Thomas smiled at her weakly and walked down to Moira’s bedside, picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Hello, Thomas, is your mother there?” It wasn’t Dr. Hollis.

Numb, he walked down to Moira in the hall. She was sitting on the top step, untangling the ribbon from her heel and saw him hold out the receiver. She took her time, standing up, patting her hair to make sure it was straight, and took the phone. “Hello?”

She listened. Theresa’s voice on the other end was harsh, loud, haranguing. Moira’s face hardened as she listened. “Did he?” she said at one point, glaring angrily at Thomas. She listened until the monologue ended and then waited, pinching her mouth. “Is that all you have to say?”

She listened again. Thomas looked back down the corridor and saw Ella still in the doorway, watching, curious and forgetting herself. He smiled to see her like that and she met his eye and gave a half smile. She knew he’d stayed with her and it mattered. For a moment Thomas felt proud and honorable.

“Hmm,” said Moira, as though she had been told something only quite interesting. “Well, if this is indeed the case then I’m very sorry for you and your children.”

The voice on the other end shouted but Moira spoke even louder and drowned her out. “You must remember, dear: the world is full of whores but in England a man can have only one wife.”

She hung up, and handed the phone back to Thomas as if it belonged to him. Looked him up and down and then bent to pick up her shopping bags.

When she stood up again she looked older. “I have a headache and I’m going to my room, darlings. Perhaps you could just see the doctor yourselves.”