‘Special.’

She frowned. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Urn … John Player.’ My lips and tongue were glued with old spit, and I wanted water.

‘Where are you?’ Her brown eyes moved over my face. It wasn’t Hyacinth.

I reached up to my head and found a mound of crêpe bandage. ‘I’m in hospital.’ My lifetime with Sonja telescoped to nothing. I’d been lying for ever in a hospital bed, growing older, waiting to be made whole. I looked towards the door, expecting Dr W- W- Webster to appear, tape measure in hand.

The nurse tapped my cheek and I focused on her again. ‘Which hospital?’

I thought for a moment. ‘St Michael’s. In Bristol.’

The nurse stroked my hand and smiled. ‘We’ll be moving you to the ward soon.’

‘Are you from Tobago?’ I asked, as she stood up. ‘Yes, I am - how you know that?’ I shrugged and fell asleep again.

When I was woken the next time I was on the ward, curtains pulled round the bed. Another nurse was leaning over me. ‘Mr Player,’ she signed, ‘I want you to smile.’

Smile? What was there to smile about? But I pulled my lips back and bared my teeth.

‘Good, now frown.’ I frowned, which was easier.

‘OK, now grimace.’ Grimace? What was a grimace? I wasn’t sure that I’d ever done it before. I wanted Ian to be there so he could explain it to me. ‘The face you’d make if you found something horrible, disgusting,’ the nurse prompted me. What was this? The Stanislavsky Method of Care? I thought of raw celery and gurned at her. She nodded, satisfied by something.

‘You’re doing fine,’ she signed and mouthed, ‘We ask you to do that so we can see if you’ve lost any movement in your face. Those three movements use every facial muscle. But you’re fine.’ She pulled aside the curtains and left me.

I turned on my side, the bulk of the bandage on my head twisting my neck, the bed too short for me to stretch my legs out. I lay there and worried that I hadn’t grimaced properly. What if I’d left out a tangle of muscles near my mouth? I closed my eyes and practised grimacing until I fell asleep yet again. It was Ian sitting on the edge of the bed that woke me, his weight dipping the mattress to make me roll towards him.

‘What’s on earth’s the matter with you?’ he asked.

I realised my face must have moved as I slept, registering endless disgust. ‘Nothing.’

‘Here,’ he said, and laid a bunch of flowers on my chest. ‘I’ll get a vase.’

When he returned I could see he was trying not to smile, his chin trembling. I couldn’t move my neck it was so sore, so I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. ‘What?’

He produced a vase and a mirror. I took the mirror from him and looked. The bandage wasn’t a turban — it was a balloon, a wobbling balloon of ivory crêpe, sitting low on my forehead, wads of cotton wool tufting out over my ears. I guffawed and my neck seized. Ian began to laugh, and the two of us giggled as other patients looked over with disgust — not grimacing at us but something like it.