The Hired Cooker

The back kitchen of a terraced house in Leicester on a grey March morning, cold daylight onto a red quarry-tiled floor, beside a cold black cast-iron coal range a tall narrow electric cooker of grey speckled enamel on four curved cast legs, on top one round and one rectangular cast-iron hotplate, below them a grill flap and an oven door with white enamel panels, a plain dark oval and a turned wooden knob, four small amber pilot lamps, at the right a white strip with three white knobs in plain green rings, every surface plain and unmarked, a woman's hand in a knitted sleeve turning one knob.