The pen was black, a ballpoint, with its cap on, and it lay in her bag together with the form folded in three, brought from home because the ones at the counter are kept tied to a little chain, which is short, and they do not reach the last line at the bottom of the page, or they reach it crooked (the woman who had gone before her, at the side desk, had held the sheet askew, her elbow raised, and had written on it all the same).

The form was filled in throughout, in block capitals, the letters separate and all the same height, surname, first name, address, county, the line for the nation, the line for whoever was to receive the remains, and there remained one rectangle, the fourth from the top, half a finger wide and three words long, with "relationship to the deceased" printed above it in smaller type.

Inside the rectangle there was a word rubbed out, from which the eraser had taken the graphite and left the paper ruffled, lighter in the middle, grey at the edges, and against the light the strokes of the letters were still in their places, because pencil comes off badly, ink does not come off at all, and for that reason she had tried it at home in pencil.

The queue moved forward one step and the rubber soles made on the linoleum the sound they make when people shift without lifting their feet, and ahead of her there remained a man with a yellow envelope, a woman who held her sheet against her chest with both hands.

On the form what passed was "documented direct descent", which in the bookkeeping of the office means a line running down from one name to another name and traceable on a piece of paper, father, son, daughter, grandchild; for everything else there was the scale of degrees, with the number growing the further off one moves, and Irene's grandmother had been the sister of his mother, which on the scale came to four words. In the house it came to a single word, and the word was not an affectionate approximation, it was not an old people's turn of phrase, it was not a kindness done to a child who was not coming back: it was the name by which they had called him in that house for as long as there was anyone left to call him.

The notice had come out in May in the federal paper where such things come out, with the list of the twelve, the dates of death, the oldest of them 1879, and the operations ran from the first of September to the twelfth of October, which is the day the men close the ground again (the year before, the county paper had published the photographs: the green tarpaulin on four poles, the earth heaped up in a tidy mound beside the grave, two soldiers standing still with their hands in front of them), and after that came next year, "if it doesn't go in this one it doesn't go in."

For eighty years she had been translating on the threshold: the right word inside the house, the word that passes outside, and neither of the two had ever had need of the other, whereas the rectangle wanted only one, in her own hand, that would stay; and of the two hands she wrote with, learned from different people, only one went on forms, because in block capitals the letters stand apart, without touching, and anyone can read them, whereas in cursive they hold on to one another; the counter closed at four.

The register turned ninety degrees on the laminate of the counter with the flat sound of a cloth cover, the sound of something heavy set down in front of someone so that they will look at it, and the officer laid his open palm on it at the exact point where the column of names ran, so that of the whole page only the right-hand strip remained uncovered, the one where a clerk's hand had written line by line "father", "mother", "uncle", "none", in the sloping script that was taught in those days, the same for whole pages because it was a single hand, the hand of a man who had never seen those people and who nevertheless had had to decide, in one office afternoon, in what way they belonged together.

"This one I open once only."

The palm stayed where it was.

Under that palm the names were all there, with no way of reading them; above the palm there remained the bookkeeping, one box for each of them, as wide as a single word, and the box Irene had in front of her on the form was exactly as wide, the same line, the same place for the hand, "if the box is the same width it means the question is the same", printed by the same office a century apart; and the four words that would pass had been ready for months, or rather they had been ready since she had picked up the form, "first cousin twice removed", four words that fitted comfortably in the rectangle and that said nothing at all about that boy.

She wrote over the smudge.

Seven letters in block capitals, separate, all the same height, and the nib caught the paper scraped by the eraser and blotted on the first, so that the S came out wider than the others, and beneath the new letters the earlier word went on standing there against the light.

She did not lift her head either.

The officer turned the form towards himself, read it from top to bottom without stopping at the fourth line, said nothing, and instead of laying it on top of the others, in the left-hand pile that had grown all morning with sheets identical to this one, "those go through", he took it by the corner with two fingers and set it on the right, on the shelf where there was nothing else, on its own, with the brass stamp on top of it because the fan was turning.

He handed her the receipt.

The receipt had a number, a date and the line for the name of the "applicant", which was filled in, because that part had never given anyone any trouble.

Behind her the queue moved one step and a yellow envelope came down on the laminate beside her elbow, the man said good morning, the officer answered and drew the sheet towards himself.

Irene moved aside with the pen still in her hand, because there was nothing to give back: the ones at the counter were tied to the chain, hers had come with her.

She put the cap back on.