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hospital.’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜For tests, I believe.’
    â€˜Come in,’ she said.
    â€˜Just for a minute.’ Flood kicked his boots against the step and walked ahead of her down the hall’s passageway. ‘I wouldn’t fall out with a drop of water while we’re still allowed it.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜There’s rationing of water coming in,’ Flood said. ‘Do you people not read the papers?’
    She filled a mug from the cold tap and handed it to him, staying standing. He raised it to her, as if to say cheers. He drained it in one go and wiped his lips with his sleeve. He looked her up and down. He said, ‘You’re wasting away.’
    She smiled again. It was like she was vanishing, visibly. After that, he said nothing. He just placed the mug on the table. She figured, after a few seconds, that he meant her weight: she was losing weight, diminishing in front of him. What was it Martina had said about Flood on the road home from the pictures? Flood was sweet on Helen. Had Marcus said so? Or was her sister just stirring it?
    â€˜What about that family?’
    â€˜Family?’ Flood asked. You could tell by the way he said it that he knew whom she meant, that he was just buying time to think of an answer.
    â€˜The family from the midlands that you mentioned?’
    â€˜Any day now,’ Flood said. He was looking across at her, as though he realized he had said the exact same thing the first time they’d met. She ran her middle finger across the nape of her neck, dragging her hair forward over one collarbone and plaiting it, like bread. Maybe he meant something completely different this time. ‘Any day now.’
    â€˜What do you think?’ She stepped sideways and spread one arm towards the rest of the room. She was asking him what he thought of her handiwork.
    â€˜You’ve acquitted yourself very nicely.’
    â€˜I’ve . . .?’ She could see the horror in Flood’s expression, the wish that he hadn’t worded it that way. It was as if the moment had a hole at its centre, the heat’s precise source, and they were standing on opposite sides and staring down into it at once. Another door shut, upstairs. ‘You hear that?’
    â€˜They’re spring-loaded,’ Flood said. ‘There’s a little chain in the hinge. Have you not noticed the doors shutting behind you?’
    â€˜Of course I have!’
    â€˜If you just leave them resting on the latch, they’ll keep pulling.’ Flood was speaking softly. He was peering a little at her. ‘Might take a while, but they’ll keep trying to shut until they do.’
    â€˜I thought we might have had guests.’
    â€˜Guests?’
    â€˜Other people in the house,’ she said, ‘apart from us. Please don’t tell anyone.’
    â€˜How’s herself? No school?’ Flood was speaking past Helen to the telly’s chirping in the front room.
    â€˜September. No point sending her in for the last month and a bit.’
    â€˜We won’t say anything, will we?’ Flood called through. Then he said to Helen, as if the girl wasn’t there at all, ‘Sure she hardly says anything to anybody.’
    Harry died. He went in for tests and never came out. They went down for the removal. It was late in the afternoon, and Paul and Martina were still at work. Helen and the girl rang the doorbell before the coffin was carried out. Someone they had never seen before answered. They asked for Sheila. Sheila looked gorgeous when she came out, in a black one-piece with a gold chain and matching earrings. Her lavender scent, when she embraced them both at once, was the same as Helen’s mother used wear. Because of all the oil drums and muck parched to sand, the cortège had to start from the bottom of the close. Flood was among them, waiting in a slate-grey suit. Several of the mourners were holding golf