The kitchen of Number 22 Nelson Street in Harrowby smelled of warm laundry soap, fried onions, and the damp wool of drying school blazers. Outside, the sodium streetlamps had flickered on along the terraced street. He cast an amber glare across the rain-slick tarmac of the front garden path.
Ada Morland stood at the gas cooker in her slippers, stirring a pot of tinned tomato soup with a wooden spoon while four slices of white bread toasted beneath the eye-level grill. Her knees ached with that deep, thrumming fatigue that came from driving forty miles between heavy-duty callouts and spending thirty minutes kneeling in cold cellar mud. On the draining board, an empty mug of tea sat waiting for fresh milk.
Through the door of the small lean-to back kitchen at the back of the kitchen came the rhythmic clink-clack of a small socket wrench and the sound of water gurgling into an old plastic washing-up bowl.
Her fifteen-year-old nephew, Ben, was sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor in front of Ada’s Indesit front-loading washing machine. He wore his grey school trousers with the knees patched in blue denim, his sleeves rolled up to his skinny elbows. His brown hair fell over his forehead as he worked by the light of a small magnetic check torch.
