I stare at the thin lines joined by black dots, trying to imagine what it would be like to hear thirty and thirty-five.

‘Go away and think about it John. Talk to Sonja about it. As with all operations, there are risks. Ask her to call me if she wants to. At home if necessary.’ He writes his home number on a yellow Post-it and hands it to me.

I stand, my mind sparking with possibilities and doubts, reeling a little as I try to order my thoughts. I shake the doctor’s hand and walk slowly to the door. He catches me as I open it, tugs my sleeve. ‘One more thing — it might help you make up your mind.’

‘What?’

‘Even if you can’t hear, even if that doesn’t happen, as long as there are no perforations, as long as the eardrums are whole after the myringoplasty, there is something you’ll be able to do.’

I’m puzzled. ‘What? What will I be able to do?’

And Dr Laws smiles a wolfish smile. ‘Swim, Special. You’ll be able to swim.’

It was Hyacinth who nicknamed me Special. She sashayed into my room early one morning, before my mother had arrived, pushing her mop and bucket before her, and I could tell she was singing by the way her mouth was moving, her high-held buttocks twitching. My fingers plucked at the thin blanket on the bed as I watched her. I’d never seen her before; she radiated energy, and something else. Took me a while to recognise what it was — happiness. I hadn’t seen that for some time. Hyacinth ignored me for minutes and then, in an exaggerated pantomime, pretended to see me for the first time. She pushed aside the mop and bucket, came over to the foot of the bed, picked up the clipboard hanging there and flipped the pages, pursing her mouth and frowning. She looked again at the cover page and laughed, her teeth flashing gold, then came to perch on the edge of the bed.

‘Hello,’ she mouthed.

‘Hello,’ I said, intrigued.

‘How are you?’

‘OK.’

She said something else but my lip-reading wasn’t well developed then and I lost the words. I picked up the pad by my bed and held it out to her but she brushed it aside and motioned for me to give her my hand. She held it for minutes, rubbing it with her thumbs, watching my face, learning my face, she told me later, so that she would know each day how I was feeling. Then she turned up my palm and traced a letter on it. My skin tingled. I watched the shape form.

‘M?’ I asked. She nodded and traced again.

‘Y?’ Another nod. And then she drew a line across my skin, scraping it with her nail.

‘I?’ Doubtful. She shook her head, held her thumb and forefinger apart.

‘Space?’ I asked, and she nodded, laughed. I laughed with her.

‘M … Y. My! My!’ I shouted, suddenly understanding, delighted to have solved the problem.