‘Maybe he’s scared and unsure of himself. It’s the first time he’s had a job. Maybe it’s just fear coming through.’

‘Fucking idiocy coming through, more like. You should see him and then you’d know what I mean. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. Can’t see him coming back tomorrow, and anyway—’

Sonja motioned me to be quiet. ‘It’s the phone.’ She gathered herself and stood up in one easy motion, her skirt wrapping round her hips and thighs. I watched her speaking into the receiver, hand on hip, rocking back and forth, her toes turned up slightly, examining her bare, olive feet. At one point she laid the back of her hand on her forehead as if feeling for her own fever. An odd, touching gesture. I felt my groin spark, felt my hands grow heavy. It had been months. It had been months since she met her Blind Man. I stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore my hard-on, distracting myself by imagining Darren Whiteside’s home life.

Sonja put the phone down and rather than sitting on the floor where she had been came over to the settee, nudged me over, lay down next to me. ‘That was Dr Laws. He wanted to know if you’d made up your mind.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said you had. I said yes.’

‘Did you ask him how long before they can do it?’

‘Yes. It’s usually a few months but he says he’s going to bring it forward. He thinks you’ve waited long enough. Probably about six weeks, with about six weeks to recover.’ She looked at my mouth. ‘Six weeks, John. January.’

We stared at each other then, blue and grey eyes locked, for a long, long time, acknowledging, both of us, what that meant.

A fortnight before I was due to leave St Thomas’ my mother told me she was going away for a week. I was in bed, resting my reset legs, when she told me. She hadn’t left my side for over a year. I scrabbled for my pad and pencil — a reflex when I was frightened, when my world was rocked. I had become so institutionalised my world fell apart if my breakfast was late.

Why?

‘Because you’re leaving here soon and I have to get things ready for us.’

What things?

‘A hundred things, John. I want everything to be the best for you when you come out.’ She took the pencil and paper from me gently. ‘I’ll only be gone a week. It will pass without you even noticing.’ Her face was even more severe than usual, the lines round her mouth hacked by a careless butcher. She had drawn herself in, into herself, preparing to tell me this. ‘And when I get back, you’ll be getting ready to leave and all this will be over.’ She leaned over and kissed my forehead and I began to scream. I knew I was screaming as she walked out and Hyacinth and Harry walked in. The whole episode had been orchestrated so that I wouldn’t be left alone for a moment.