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bedroom, the other one.’
    Since Nigel was standing just outside, he once again opened the door to the room where their mother had died. The curtains, drawn shut, were fudgy beige and unexceptional. Curtains were the kind of thing Sophie could spend hours on. From her beleaguered anecdotes, Nigel had picked up that they tended to be both problematic and expensive. It remained hard to see why.
    â€˜Yeah. What’s the thing with the curtains?’
    â€˜They’re new.’
    Louise cut out again, but keenly rang him back to explain. If their mother had only become ill in the week or so before her death, as Patrick claimed, why had she been sleeping in the spare room long enough to warrant and allow the ordering of a new set of curtains? Nigel was baffled. He suggested, simply, that the curtains had been worn out and she had at some point replaced them. No mystery there.
    â€˜In that house?’ said Louise. Nigel took the point. Their mother’s deficiencies as a housekeeper apart, when did they ever have guests to warrant such an uncharacteristic effort?
    â€˜Anyway, her clothes. All her everyday clothes were in that room, Nidge. I realised when I was doing the sort-out. It was only the ones she didn’t wear any more she kept in their ward—’
    This time Louise seemed to have gone for good. Oh, she was an annoying cow. He had heard the excitement in her voice. Always latching on to something, milking it for emotion. If you could be passive aggressive, maybe it was possible to be a passive drama queen. What was it she was cranking up here? That Mum had been sleeping in the spare room for months because she was ill and Patrick had kept it from them? Even if he had, so what? It wasn’t like he’d held a pillow over her face. And why had Louisechosen to delay sharing this speculation until she was well away from any possibility of confronting Patrick about it? If she felt so thwarted from a late-stage Florence Nightingale bid to care for Mum, she could take him on herself. Nigel certainly wasn’t going to say anything.
    A sound intruded: the tidal crunchings of a car labouring cautiously into the pocked drive. From the landing window, Nigel saw the livery of the local taxi firm. Patrick got out, fishing in his raincoat pocket for cash. He looked different. Smarter somehow, despite the raincoat. The cab drove off. Nigel headed downstairs.
    â€˜What are you doing here?’
    Patrick’s tone was amiable, despite his surprise. Nigel saw that he’d had a haircut. The flop of his forelock as he tossed the house keys into a dish on the hall table was newly boyish.
    â€˜I tried to ring.’
    â€˜They’ve all gone, thank Christ.’ Patrick’s ears, revealed by the trim, were enormous. Once Nigel had noticed this, it was difficult not to stare. Surely they hadn’t always been that large? ‘I suppose it’s me you want?’
    Nigel said that it was. Which was true, given everything there was to dot and cross. Certainly better to do it without the irritant of Louise, and perhaps even lacking the stimulant of Mia. He pointed out to Patrick that he’d left the back door unlocked.
    â€˜Nothing worth stealing,’ he shrugged, leading the way in to the kitchen. He’d brought a pasty in from town, which he ate messily straight from the paper bag, while Nigel made them both an instant coffee and ferreted out a hardened stripe of cheese left in the anachronistically tiny fridge. No caffeine, no dairy. He completed the diabolical trinity with the heel of supermarket white sliced Louise had abandoned in the bread bin, making himself a sandwich.
    â€˜Do you think you’ll stay here, Patrick?’
    In the moment of delay before he answered, Nigel feared an outburst, but Patrick’s shrug was amiable. A trip to the pub had possibly followed the barber’s.
    â€˜I don’t see why not. Managed here long enough.’
    â€˜Yes, but. It’ll