Her daughter always came on a Tuesday, and she was very particular about Enid’s care, noticing the smallest things, like a ladder in her stockings or whether her nails had been done. Enid didn’t know why she bothered. If it was inheritance she was after, there was none; Finetta should be the first person to know that. Enid played with the ring, moving it with slow, unconscious rhythm over her knuckle. There was nothing Finetta could possibly want that she wasn’t going to get anyway: a wardrobe of tattered clothes, a few stoles lying about, a bit of jewellery, the Augustus John. She couldn’t think that any of it was worth anything, apart from the ring. Enid pushed it down her finger again, back into its place, and tapped the emerald. She couldn’t bear assumption. She had half a mind to be buried with it. But what on earth more did Finetta hope to gain? Some emblem of a parent, just because everyone else seemed to have one? Enid had done nothing to deserve such loyalty and she resented it. She wanted to be left alone. She didn’t want to have it pointed out that she was still a mother. It was as if Finetta did it on purpose, shoving the reminder of her existence as a punishment from which Enid could not escape, a revenge dripped week by week, never letting the grass grow, making Enid re-tread the paths with every Tuesday view of her bloodline.

Enid brushed down her skirt and tried to see her mouth in the window. She scratched at each corner, her lips in an O, and then pressed them together as if she wore lipstick. She didn’t. What would be the point? Finetta was still such a beauty she hadn’t considered the possibility of her own lips growing thin. Or perhaps she had. A failed marriage, a son she doted on, a daughter she occasionally spoke of – the haunting of another generation. What did it matter if Enid’s stockings were laddered? Who was going to see? Finetta had been like that since a little girl, particular about the slightest detail of her own dress or nails, her manners, her composure in the face of turmoil. Perhaps she was making up for the fact that until she grew up and left home, with that silent, breath-taking beauty of her own, no one had taken any notice of her at all.

Carol finished straightening the bed. “Have you had enough breakfast?” She picked up the tray of untouched porridge, the half-piece of toast, the empty tea cup and stainless steel pot.

“Enough,” said Enid, her hand loosely in the air. It was too late for vanity now. Everyone in this nursing home was waiting to die and doing nothing about it.