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miss her, it would not be here or now.
    The house had to be cleared, but the landlord was accommodating, they could take as long as they needed, he said, so that it was more than a week later that she and Miriam went together. Eve was there first, and opening the front door and hearing the silence, she felt her throat tighten, because her mother should have called out or come from the kitchen to greet her and she did not. There was a hollowness at the heart of it.
    She wandered around, touching this or that, looking into her mother’s bedroom at the white crocheted cover on the tightly made bed, and her own old room, almost bare because she had taken most things with her to her married home.
    ‘Eve?’
    ‘Up here.’
    Miriam came up heavily, like an old woman climbing the stairs. She was expecting her fifth childnow and because her muscles were slack as loosened ropes, showed further on than she was.
    ‘What have you taken?’
    ‘Taken? I’ve taken nothing.’
    ‘There’s plenty I could do with. What do you need?’
    There seemed little enough in their old home to covet.
    ‘I’d only like one or two bits of china,’ Eve said. ‘And the chiming clock.’
    ‘You’ve a kitchen full of china.’
    ‘Then have it. It doesn’t matter, Miriam.’
    The clock would be enough. The Westminster chimes had measured out her childhood and her growing up.
    Miriam opened drawers and pulled things out, set them on the table, riffled through linen and spoons.
    ‘There’s the furniture,’ Eve said, looking round. Neither of them had room for any of it.
    ‘I want this table and the chairs in the front room. The boys have jumped ours to bits.’
    Miriam ran her hand over the cold range. But that went with the house.
    ‘John’s been laid off,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t getting the orders.’
    Eve understood at last.
    ‘Just the clock,’ she said. ‘You can sell up the rest. I’ve no need of any. You sell it, Miriam.’

9
     
    SO THAT was death, she had thought, and remembered how she had felt so little, looking down at her mother. Death. But of course then she had known nothing.
    It was late April, a cold spring and the plum blossom barely out, the hedges not yet pricking green. Tommy had whitewashed the kitchen and the paint smelled damp and chalky. She had washed all her pieces of china in the sink, with Jeannie Eliza standing beside her on a chair and dabbing her fingers into the suds.
    ‘We’ll finish these off and go for a walk a little way,’ Eve had said and started to rinse and dry the jugs and teacups, saucers and bowls, but Jeannie had climbed down from the chair and wandered off into the other room. When she went to fetch her, the child was in Tommy’s chair, curled asleep on the cushion.Eve waited for an hour and then woke her, though by then the sky was curded with heavy grey cloud and they would not be able to walk far.
    The china looked fine, gleaming even in the dull light. She wanted someone there to admire it with her. Tommy would but only if she drew his attention to it and then he would say, ‘That looks grand,’ just to please her.
    She went to stir the child and saw that she was flushed. Her skin felt hot. Let her sleep then. Eve made tea. Rearranged the china again. Thought they would have baked potatoes with their cold meat that night.
    Rain pattered against the window.
    Jeannie did not wake until just before Tommy came in, soaked to the skin. He had to go and change clothes and brought the wet ones down to put on the airer in front of the range.
    ‘She’s not right,’ Eve said.
    ‘Colds. Everyone has them. It’s so changeable.’
    He knelt beside his daughter and touched her cheek. Frowned.
    ‘Red hot.’
    ‘Should I get her into her bed?’
    ‘Sponge her with tepid water. It’s not good to be so hot.’
    Jeannie woke and her eyes were too bright. The heat came off her from a foot away.
    ‘No,’ she said, and tried to push her face into the cushion, turning it from the light.
    At