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Hanging her coat on the rack, Ellen walked into a wall of heat.

It was just what she needed – scraping the car windscreen at four thirty in the afternoon wasn’t what she wanted to do. She was cold, right through to her skin, perhaps to her bones. The heating bill was a worry, but the house needed to be warm.

She remembered, as a child, when the pipes burst, and flooded her front room. Not only that, there were so many viruses going around, she was lucky not to have caught something.

A ready meal for one, turning in the microwave, she put the kettle on. There was no way she was going out, not again. There was a Netflix programme with her name on it. Minutes later, slippers on, she settled on the sofa. Her mobile, switched off, she needed time to herself to recuperate from the day.