"Hannah, you have to go to work."

Shelly waited patiently for Hannah to reply; she put her hand on her hip, checked her watch. After a while a sound emerged from the bedclothes that might have been Hannah saying something but might just as easily have been Hannah snoring.

"Get up" Shelly said. She felt like how she imagined her mother must have felt, telling her own children to get up; that wasn't something Shelly had ever imagined having to feel.

"I don't wanna" she heard Hannah say.

"That's . . . kind of immaterial, sweetie" Shelly said, trying to sound pleasant. She was starting to feel cold: she hadn't yet put on her winter jacket, though she knew rationally that it was probably colder inside the house than outside. Autumn had arrived, just like that, all of a sudden, and now everything was shivering. She wondered if there'd be frost on the grass this morning.

"Is it cold?" Hannah asked from the comfort of the bed. Shelly could see a few strands of her hair, thick and black, and that was all: nothing else of Hannah was visible.

Instead of answering, Shelly pulled the blankets back from Hannah's feet. Immediately they recoiled, like a cat's paws at the sting of a bee, and Hannah made her loudest noise yet:

"Oh god Shel that's not funny! Cover me up, cover me up!"

"You have to get out of bed" Shelly said again. "You have to go to work."

"Work sucks."

"But you have to do it, all the same."

"I'm warm."

"Hannah, don't make me just whip the covers off. I'll do it, you know." Shelly wondered if she actually would. Just for an instant she was appalled at the thought that she might.

"Why do I have to go to work?" Hannah asked.

"Because they pay you, and you pay the gas company, and that's how the heater works. And it's not even winter yet and this is how cold the mornings are already."

Shelly waited to see if this would make a difference. Eventually, finally, Hannah threw the blankets back from over her head. She looked at Shelly, bleary-eyed.

"Fuck."

I thought I saw frost this morning but I think it was just really fat dew.