‘I want them, y’naw, kids?’ Molly said to Alex, as she shouted over the sound of the dryer. ‘But I couldn’t do it without a lot of encouragement, and I don’t know, Bobby just feels it’s time, but I think we’re too young.’

‘Well, we’re mad about our scuts,’ Alex offered, tapping my shoulder. ‘They’re great, well, they’re grand, you know … they’re there, I guess,’ he said as he reduced our children to ornaments.

‘I guess,’ she smiled, and left. Alex turned off the dryer and put some mousse in the roots of my hair, massaging my head with the tips of his fingers.

‘I so wanted you to ask how they were thinking of doing it?’ I whispered when Molly walked off.

‘How what?’ He looked at me, mousse bottle in his hands.

‘How they are thinking of trying to have the kid, you know, like how they’ll do it?’

‘Do it?’ he asked, alarmed.

‘Conceive the baby, ya twat?’

‘Oh, oh God, oh, that’s none of our business.’ He waved the bottle in front of me. He was a useless gossip. He’d never survive the Ward, Hospital.

‘Now don’t you look just gorgeous?’ he said, and laughed, neither of us convinced, but I took his word for it. He tidied up and I stayed sitting out on the chair. It was a pleasant break. The feeling of clean hair was unworldly. Someone came in and reattached my leads and the telemetry monitor and complained how the shower had fucked it all up on them, but I didn’t care. It was glorious to be clean.

I grabbed on to Alex with my two hands. ‘Look, no one would know I’m a patient now, would they?’ I waved my hands over my Batmanesque costume.

‘Maybe?’ he said, doubtful. ‘But they’d certainly think you were fucking crazy.’

‘If you love me … you’d kidnap me.’

‘That’s blackmail,’ Alex said. But he didn’t say no. I was about to explain that people don’t blackmail for their own kidnapping, not usually, when Jim arrived on the Ward.

Chapter 20

‘Well, Mags, so gud ta see ya,’ Jim Maughan said, arriving nervously back on the Ward, and greeting his anxious sister, gauging her reaction.

‘Jim,’ Margaret Rose said, quietly.

He leaned in slowly over her and kissed her cheek, gently. ‘And look, Michaela’s here too. Hi, how’re you, love? Lovely ta see ye both.’ And he kissed his niece in turn. ‘Now look …’ he said to Margaret Rose. ‘I came as fast as I could …’

‘Right,’ Margaret Rose said, eyeballing him. ‘What’s wrong, Jim? What’s happened?’

‘It didn’t go so … so smoothly … sorry.’ Jim nodded at her phone.

Margaret Rose knew it was all gone belly up with Niquita’s absconding.

‘Is there more, Jim? Tell me.’

Jim opened up the top button of his shirt, and spread across the collar with his large hand. He shoved his wheelie case into the corner. ‘Now, plays, don’na be alarmed.’

‘What? What is it?’ Margaret Rose said nervously, and grabbed Michaela by the shoulders.