‘Well, you need to get home right away. I’ve just had Mum on the phone. She was put through via the switchboard, so I had to come out early from eating my lunch in the staff restaurant especially to deal with her …’ Grace was sure she heard Bernie tut with frustration, which made her bristling intensify. She crossed her free arm across her body as if to soothe herself. ‘And she was crying—’

‘Crying?’ Grace interjected, panic starting to trickle through her, as it was unlike Cora to cry. In fact, Grace wasn’t sure she had ever seen her mother cry. Not even when their gentle, kind dad, had died. Cora had said, ‘It was your father’s time to pass.’ And that was that. No more emotion required.

‘Yes. That’s right,’ Bernie kept on. ‘Crying. Sobbing she was, so hard she could barely get her words out. Took me ages to calm her down. Apparently, you rushed off so quickly after your own lunch break that she didn’t even get a chance to use the commode. So now she’s had an accident and feels really dreadful about it.’

‘But—’

‘No buts, Grace. You can’t just leave her like that. She’ll get sore and then likely get an infection or whatever, and you’ll never forgive yourself if that happens.’ Grace swallowed hard as she tried to formulate a response. ‘Are you still there?’ Bernie barked a few seconds later, and Grace could hear office noise now in the background.

‘Yes,’ she managed in a dejected voice, her earlier elation on seeing Mrs Donato’s belongings having suddenly vanished, not to mention her feelings of guilt and confusion. She hadn’t rushed off, and she was sure she had asked Cora if she needed to use the commode, but had been told off for fussing …

‘Look, I have to go. But sort Mum out and let me know later, OK? Oh, hold on.’ The instruction was so swift and fleeting that Grace automatically acquiesced. ‘If you take a seat over there, someone will be with you shortly,’ she heard Bernie say in a far nicer voice, and then, ‘I really do need to go, Grace. I’m just so busy. I’ve a queue of people who all need my help and …’ Grace wasn’t listening any more; all she could think about was something she had read online last night at around midnight as she stood waiting for the microwave to ping time on Cora’s request for a mug of warm milk with a sprinkle of nutmeg on top. The article was about people being busy being busy and so somehow managing to fill their time, regardless of their actual workload, and thereby convincing themselves they were busier than everyone else … she figured that Bernie must be one of those ‘busy’ people.