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a cereal bowl in the plate rack. ‘He was doing himself a cooked breakfast right up till she died but he won’t do it now. Mugs of cold tea he’s forgotten sitting about all over the house and these everlasting cereal bowls.’
    â€˜Better than the bottle,’ Gareth said. He eyed Velma from behind. She wore purple leggings and a black jersey – not long enough – and turquoise trainers. ‘Me daps,’ she called them. Her bottom, Gareth decided, reminded him of his mum’s.
    â€˜He thought the world of her,’ Velma said firmly. ‘The world.’
    â€˜Did he?’ Gareth said. The Robin he knew was not, he considered, the kind of man to think the world of anything or anybody. He’d never go that far. He just wanted things to work, jobs to be done properly. When Debbie complained, as she frequently did, that all he, Gareth, ever thought about was the cows, he said well, he had to, didn’t he? With Robin on his back day and night, he hadn’t exactly got a choice, had he? Debbie wanted him to stop being a herdsman, and go back to college to learn some modern skills with computers and business studies. She wanted to see him in the management side of farming, not in a mucky boiler suit with hands and arms that had spent half the day up something she’d rather not think about. But Gareth liked cows. He didn’t mind the hours and he didn’t mind Robin. In any case, the thought of computers made him panic.
    â€˜Where’s he gone then?’ Velma said.
    â€˜Milk quota meeting.’
    â€˜Load of nonsense, all this quota stuff—’
    â€˜Yeah,’ Gareth said. He stood up, screwing the foil in which Debbie had wrapped his sandwiches into a ball. He said, ‘Funny here now. Isn’t it?’
    Velma took her hands out of the sink and dried them on a tea towel. She looked round the room, at its sunny, fruity, American colours, at the extravagant fridge, at the poster of an enormous swooping bridge photographed black against a sunset under the slogan, ‘California Dreamin’’.
    â€˜She never settled,’ Velma said. ‘Not really. Me mam’s sister was like that. Went to New Zealand to marry a sheep farmer and she never really took to it. Homesick till the day she died, always pining. At least,’ Velma said, wiping a handful of spoons, ‘my auntie knew what she was pining for. I don’t think our madam here ever did.’
    â€˜Who’s that?’ Gareth said. It was time he was back out in the yard, getting the three cows whose feet needed attention into the metal-framed crush so he could inspect them, but there was something about this conversation that was oddly alluring. And now, beyond Velma’s outline at the window by the sink, he could see a Land Rover in the yard.
    â€˜Joe,’ Velma said. She tugged down her jersey. Good-looking fellow, Joe.
    â€˜What’s he doing here?’
    Velma went over to the kitchen door and out through the porch where the boots were kept, to the yard.
    â€˜He’s out!’ she yelled at Joe.
    â€˜That’s OK—’
    He came past her into the kitchen, boiler-suited like Gareth in dark-blue drill and wearing army-fatigue boots.
    â€˜Morning, Gareth—’
    Gareth nodded. He picked up his flask and his copy of the daily paper he preferred, partly for its obsessive football coverage and partly for the daily tits shot. Debbie had had tits once, but they seemed to have vanished, subsiding in a gradual and puzzling way as each of her three children was born. Pity, really.
    â€˜I’m getting back to the yard—’
    â€˜Yes,’ Joe said.
    Velma came back into the kitchen saying, ‘Coffee?’
    â€˜No thanks,’ Joe said. ‘I just want to look for something.’ He paused and then he said, ‘Upstairs.’
    â€˜I’ll show you—’
    â€˜No,’ Joe said. He put a hand out, as if to stop her.