Kit does Maisie's hair with her eyes shut.
She has the comb in one hand and a bobble in her teeth, and her chin keeps going down towards the kitchen table and coming back up with a jerk, like somebody on the last bus. Maisie sits in front of her with her feet off the floor and her shoulders up round her ears, holding the ends of her own hair in her fist so that none of it gets lost.
"Fishtail," Kit says through the bobble. "It's a plait that's been to college."
"Mummy does a normal one."
"Your mummy is a very sensible woman. I do about four hundred of these a year. Hospice Christmas party. Every nurse on the ward with a fishtail, and a dying man giving his opinion."
"What was his opinion?"
"He said it made me look like a pony."
Maisie considers this, with her head very still. "Daddy does ponytails like a rope."
"Daddy does everything like a rope."
"I'm here," Owen says from the counter.
"We know," says Kit.
It's twenty past nine. He was at Leanne's door at five to, in the clean fleece, and Leanne handed Maisie over in the new coat with a look at the van tyres. Keep her out of mud, she said. Back at four. Don't be late. And then, lower, over Maisie's head: And don't promise her stuff. He's been carrying the promise he didn't make all the way across town, like a cup too full.
Sixteen days to the hearing, and a Saturday at a time to build the case a family court adviser will read: a clean kitchen, a child with her hair done, a man who is always, always on time.
Under the sum, in his head, four numbers. He told himself he'd forget them by lunch. They've sat in there since eight o'clock in the yard, with her mouth nearly on his ear, neat as a postcode.
"There," Kit says. She ties off the bobble, pats the plait, and says "Beautiful," and puts her forehead on the table next to the teapot and is gone.
Maisie doesn't turn round. She holds the plait in both fists to keep it safe, and whispers, as loudly as she can, which is very loudly: "Is she dead?"
"No. She's a nurse. She's been up all night."
"She smells nice."
"Doesn't she."
He hears himself say it. He puts the lid on the teapot.
He takes his fleece off and lays it over Kit's shoulders, and she says something that's nearly his name, and doesn't wake. He gets Maisie the felt tips out of the drawer by the cooker, the ones with the dried-out orange, and she sets to work at the other end of the table with her tongue out.
She draws for six minutes. He watches her not looking at him. Then she turns the paper round and holds it up in both hands.
It's unmistakably Kit. She's got a blue nurse's dress and a stethoscope like a snake, and above her, taking up the whole of the top of the page, is a cloud of yellow scribble with a face in the bottom of it.
"That's your hair," Maisie says, to the sleeping woman. "It's very big."
"That's good," Owen says. "That's really good. What's the face?"
"That's the sun. It's looking at her hair."
She starts a second one immediately. Same woman, same dress, smaller, with the hair done in a different yellow. This one she does with great care, round the edges, the stethoscope an improvement.
"One for Kit," she says. "One for Daddy's van."
"Why the van?"
"So you're not lonely when I'm at Mummy's."
He doesn't say anything. He finds the Blackpool magnet and puts the first one on Kit's fridge, at Maisie's height, and folds the second down the middle.
It's twenty to ten. He can see the whole of it laid out in front of him like a tray. He's due at High Royd at ten, because Rosie leaves at ten, because Frank can't be left. Kit's out cold at the table. He can't leave a seven-year-old with a sleeping woman, any more than Leanne would let him. He could ring Leanne and say, I've got a bit of a situation, can I bring her to my work. He knows exactly what Leanne would say, and Leanne would be right.
He gets Maisie's coat.
"Where are we going?"
"To work. It's a short one. You can bring your pens."
"Is it a new place?"
"It's an old man's house," Owen says. "He's very nice."
In the van he clips the folded drawing to the sun visor, so that when the sun's out Kit's hair is a yellow cloud over his eyes. Maisie, in her booster seat, approves the job, like a foreman.
Rosie is in the yard with her keys in her hand and her fleece zipped to her chin, and she says "Oh my GOD," when the door of the van opens, and "Who is THIS?" and Maisie says, with enormous dignity, "It's a fishtail."
"It's SO good. Who did it?"
"Kit."
"Kit did that? On her night off? She's literally a saint. She's literally got no personality except saint." Rosie crouches. "Hiya. I'm Rosie. I've got to go to work, but I'll be back later, and I'll bring you a muffin, and you can't tell my grandad because he's on a diet."
"Is he fat?"
"He's, no, he's—" Rosie looks at Owen, appalled and thrilled. "Oh my God, I love her."
She's gone in a puff of garden-centre fleece. The yard goes quiet. The wind comes down off the moor, and Maisie slips her hand into his, without looking, as if it were a pocket.
Frank has his teeth in.
He's sitting up with a rug over his knees and the oxygen looped over his ears, and he has done something with his hair. Owen knows, as certainly as his own name, that it was a wet comb in the last four minutes, with no mirror.
"Miss Rudd," says Frank. "How do you do."
"Hello. I'm seven."
"So I'd heard. I'm eighty-two."
"Why have you got a tube?"
"To breathe. It's a terrible nuisance. I've had it so long I've started calling it Gerald."
Maisie looks at the tube. She looks at Frank. Her face does a lot, and none of it is fear. "Hello, Gerald," she says.
Owen is leaning on the door frame. His legs have decided to.
There's a jigsaw. Of course there's a jigsaw, in the sideboard, a Flying Scotsman, five hundred pieces, Rosie's from some Christmas, and Frank has Owen swing the over-bed table across, and tip it out, and the two of them sit with their heads together doing the edges. Frank does them the way he does the crossword, one decisive piece at a time, as if he's been told the answers. Maisie does the steam. She does it with her whole body. She tells him about her school and the girl called Poppy who is not her friend, and Frank listens as if Poppy might yet come up before the bench.
"That is a very lucky grandfather," Frank says at one point, to nobody, "who gets a girl like you to sit with him."
"I haven't got one. They're both dead."
"I'm sorry to hear it."
"My daddy's daddy drove a lorry and it fell over."
"Did it," says Frank softly. He fits a piece. He doesn't look up. "I knew him. He was the best driver I ever had."
Owen's hand has gone to his own throat.
"Was he nice?"
"Everybody liked him," says Frank. "He had a look of you about the chin." And he turns his head, only a little, and looks at Owen across the bed, very mild, very kind. "Maisie has Dennis's chin, don't you think, Owen?"
"Kitchen," Owen says. "I'll do you both a sandwich."
The kitchen is cold and bright and smells of Dettol. He puts both hands flat on the counter, and through the wall he can hear Maisie's laugh, the real one, the whole-body one, because Frank has said something about Gerald. Owen breathes. He cuts cheese. He cuts the crusts off, and puts them in a pile, and squares the pile.
The box is on the dresser between the fruit bowl and the bread bin, grey metal, with its little keypad. He's not looking at it. He's looking at the dresser very hard.
He's pressing the numbers before he's decided to.
It opens with a click that's much quieter than he expected. Foam inside, in two rows of ten, and the little glass ampoules lying in it with their necks all one way, like a row of sleeping things. He looks at them. He knows each one. Eleven years of his life was these.
And it comes, all at once, with its corners squared. A nurse who's been suspended. Behind on her rent. Told the police her patient was having her killed. A dying man she got too close to. When Frank goes, she's on her own with the box and the sheet, and nobody in Sallowford would even ask.
He hates it.
He takes eight.
He counts them into his palm, bare-handed, because it doesn't cross his mind that he could do it any other way. Eight, cold, light. Not all of them. He holds that up in front of himself. In his fleece pocket there's a freezer bag, folded small, from the roll under Kit's sink. He took it this morning, for Maisie's apple. He is not going to think about that. He puts the eight in the bag and the bag in his pocket, and closes the box, and wipes the keypad with the tea towel, and sets the box back on the dresser on top of the sheet. Twenty, it says, in Kit's round hand, signed this morning at eight.
Sunday night at eight o'clock somebody will count.
He'll think about Sunday on Sunday.
"Daddy!" From the parlour. "Gerald says he's winning!"
"Coming!"
He tells Maisie he'll fetch her good felt tips, left on the seat of the van, and that's true, and he goes out through the back door into the cold. The glovebox is full of manuals and a bag of Haribo he's had since August. He puts the freezer bag at the back, under the manuals, and shuts the lid. Above him, the sun visor is down. Kit looks out of it, enormous, all hair, with the sun in the corner watching her.
He stands in the yard a while with the door open.
Then he goes back in and does the sandwiches.
The afternoon happens. He's good at afternoons. Frank sleeps in short stretches with his chin on his chest, and when he wakes he goes back to the jigsaw as if he hadn't left it. Maisie finishes the steam. She asks to see the barn, and he says no, and she asks if she can draw Gerald, and Frank says Gerald would be honoured. At two Frank asks for a cup of tea, black, as a courtesy, and doesn't touch it. At three Maisie falls asleep with her head on the edge of the bed, one plait out across the blanket, and Frank, with one finger, very slowly, lifts a corner of the blanket and puts it over her shoulder.
He doesn't say anything to Owen. Owen finds he's standing again.
Rosie comes in at quarter past three, back from work, with a muffin in a bag. She stops in the doorway and puts her hand on her chest.
"Oh my God. You did a jigsaw? Grandad. You did a jigsaw."
"I did the edges," says Frank.
"He did the edges," Maisie says, awake at once. "I did the steam."
Rosie doesn't say anything, because she's crying a bit, and she hugs Owen very hard and says "thank you" into his shoulder. He pats her back. A village sitter's coming at seven, she says, and she's on all night, Kit's off. Nobody to worry about, and nobody counting anything till Sunday. He says that's great. He takes his fleece, and the felt tips, and the child.
In the van she's quiet for the first mile. She's looking at the visor, and at the hair.
"Daddy."
"Yes, Moo."
"Is Kit your girlfriend?"
The indicator ticks. He checks the mirror, and checks it again.
"She's my friend."
"She's got nice hair."
"She has."
"Is Frank going to die?"
"Everybody dies, Maisie."
"But is he going to die soon?"
"I don't know, love."
"Gerald's going to be sad," says Maisie, and puts her thumb in her mouth, which she hasn't done since she was five, and goes to sleep.
Leanne is on the step at four on the dot, in her slippers, with her arms folded and her hair wet, and behind her in the hall there are a man's trainers on the mat. He's got his speech ready. He's had it since the roundabout. We went to the garden centre, he's going to say, Rosie's, from the café, she had a muffin, there was a lovely man doing the planters.
He opens the van door. Maisie comes down on to the pavement with her plait and her pencil tin, and runs up the path, and Leanne crouches and says, "Who did your hair? Look at you."
"Kit did it. She's got really big hair. I drew her."
"Did she? That's lovely."
"And then we went to see a man who's dying," says Maisie. "He had a tube."
There's a pause on the step, about a second long.
"Garden centre," Owen says. "Leanne. We, it was the, there was a muffin—"
"Go and put your pencils away, Maisie," Leanne says, in the voice she used to use on him. Maisie goes. Leanne stands up. She is thirty-four, and tired, and fair, and fair is the worst of all of them.
"I said not a new place without asking me."
"It was a job, Lee. It was one hour. The old fella's lovely, he's nothing, it's oxygen—"
"It's a deathbed, Owen."
"It isn't a, he's not, it's not like that—"
"She sat next to a dying man doing a jigsaw." She says it flat. She doesn't raise her voice. She never has. "And you didn't ask, because you knew what I'd say. That's the thing you do. You decide, and you tell me after, and you're so nice about it." She breathes. "I've got to ring the family court adviser anyway, about the house. She's been wanting to see where you live. She can come Wednesday week. The twenty-fifth. And she can meet this woman you live with, and she can ask her what sort of a place it is, where a man takes a little girl to sit with the dying."
"She's a nurse. She's lovely. She'd—"
"Then she won't mind," Leanne says, and goes in, and the door goes shut, quietly, not a slam.
He gets back in the van. He sits there with his hands at ten and two.
Wednesday the twenty-fifth. Eleven days. A woman with a stethoscope for a face and a yellow cloud for hair has to sit in her kitchen, with a cup of tea, and look the adviser in the eye, and be fine. She has to be alive, and calm, and well thought of. She has to be someone you'd leave a child with.
And Frank has to be—
He doesn't finish it.
He starts the engine. At the first corner the glovebox drops open an inch, and the freezer bag shows.