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ornamental pendants, to smart stores, with a cheap range for small ironmongers. He still had his shiny wedding suit and collar, and best shoes. They came out and Miriam dabbed over them with white spirit whose fumes made her boys sick. But the suit came up well. Boxes of samples were delivered and had to be locked into the car out of reach of the boys. He left and did not know when he would be back, and Miriam settled into her chair and closed her eyes, as the sound of the engine died away, and felt peace and a sense of safety, having herself to herself. Michael and Clive were at school, Arthur George played in the yard all day, and Neville was a sleeper, a huge, bald, easily satisfied baby.
    Perhaps that could be the last of it, somehow, she thought, and because the sun was shining that morning, stood on a chair to unhook the kitchen curtains and set them in a sink full of soapy water. It turned greasy grey after a few minutes. She was glad no one else was there to see it, her mother, who would have remarked, and Eve who kept a neat, clean houseand would notice but say nothing. Eve’s silence was the worst. Miriam had always, and quite without reason, felt harshly judged by her sister.
    Later, she took Neville out in his pram, Arthur George sitting on the front, and by then the sun had long gone and the streets were darkened under heavy cloud. The whole town felt like a place struck down by some terrible affliction or contagious disease. No one smiled. People kept their eyes down and no longer made jokes to one another. Men hung about.
    For the first time in her life, because of having a man with a car and work, Miriam felt superior. He came home every three weeks, sometimes looking downcast, having sold very little, once or twice buoyant, having taken orders. His pay was poor and the commission from the good weeks took a long time to reach him so that money was even more of a struggle and twice Miriam had to ask her mother to help out. Tommy came by and brought this or that, usually vegetables from the garden or a tin of cakes and biscuits Eve or he had made, and usually he left money in the teacup on the sideboard, saying nothing.
    Miriam was alone with the boys and all of them asleep the night that the bangs came on the front door, waking her into a heart-pounding fright so that she was up and down without even a cardigan round her.
    The door had been battered by Robbie Prentice, the six foot tall lad who lived with his family in Water Street.
    Vera was dead, he said. His mother had heard a crash and then a silence so terrible she had got Robbie to break in.
    ‘Go to Eve,’ Miriam said, starting to shake. ‘Have you called the doctor? Have you called the ambulance? Robbie, please will you go and fetch Eve? I’ve four children, I can’t go.’
    It was Tommy who came, of course, running all the way beside Robbie through the dark and going to the phone box to make the calls, arrange things, stay with Vera until the doctor was there. No one could have done anything. She had not died falling but had had a stroke as she was on the top landing and that had caused her to topple down the stairs.
    It was the first time Miriam had had any experience of death and she shied away from it, not wanting to see her mother, using the children as an excuse.
    But Eve went, leaving Jeannie Eliza next door, where Robbie carried her into the garden and swung her about and showed her the pigeons cooing softly in their loft. He said afterwards that she had gone quite still in his arms, her head to one side, listening.
    Tommy went with Eve.
    So that is death, she thought. Her mother lookedyounger and somehow bland, all the character smoothed out of her face and as if she were an infinite distance away. She had always shown what she felt, anger or sadness, laughter and tears had been there for you to see. Now, she was expressionless. You could not read her.
    Eve did not feel sorrow. She felt nothing. If she was to remember her mother, or to