THE NASTY CHEMICAL smell had gone. His eyelids were shut and she wanted to have one more peep to see if he was still there. Gently, she prised the right one open. The skin was tinged yellowish-brown, soft, wrinkled and cooling now. The eye – she had never seen anything like it before except on a dead fish. There was a glaze, but no look, no life. He had gone, but where?

He stayed warm all day up until 4 pm, when the white van with no signage pulled into the driveway and she noticed the neighbours drawing their curtains. Two cheap suits with mock-serious expressions walked in. The mother knew one of them and struck up a lively conversation about a colleague from the same company whom she’d hoped would be a pallbearer. He used to joke that business was good because people were ‘dying to get in there’.