Up and down the dull coastline of her desk, Amerylys ticked her fingernails, Minnie Mouse airbrushed onto each bismuth pink shield.

Frances Waythorn, her face ghastly as a mime’s from a souring paste of yogurt, scrubs walls and wainscotting, praying for bleach, polish, order, something, to check her daughter’s latest slide from innocence.

We pick here because death is life’s ornament, because the place is masculine without the compromising presence of a male. It is a fortress, really, and in it we play as children, infected, set subtly adrift in our Father’s body.