‘Anyway, drugs time for you, missy … just have a little think,’ and she tucked me in. Eek. And while I enjoyed watching her mouth move, making shapes, the vintage pink stain of her lips, lying there made me a prisoner to any chat anyone wanted to have.

Hospice is not an option. I can’t be alone at night. The desperate hush-hush of weeping midnight terrifies me. There weren’t options. I’d started panicking in the middle of the night, the brutality darkness brings, and waking lathered in that sticky sweat that turns cold and feeling a warm hand pressing down hard on my throat. At home I’d try to scream but my tonsils would be swollen up like water balloons and nothing would come out. Alex would ask if I was OK. Yes. Fine. Just a bad dream. Another one? Yeah. Turn out. It’s fine. Night. Spoon. Unspoon. Spoon. Night. I’d lay there long enough to talk to myself and try and talk myself down from it.

Arrow. You Are Here. It’s OK. Remember.

Arriving in Hospital, everyone panicked. Tubes went up my nose, down my throat, next they’d need to put one up my urethra, like Shane, and I’d have a bag hanging off me too. I resisted this the most, tried to clean up my own accidents without them noticing. On the Ward they were trained to keep you alive, like vultures. I needed to go where they were trained not to.

Home.

Chapter 4

Sunday rainfall was heavy and winds battled the dodgy windows as Molly pushed them open. The gusts knocked over some cards and kidney dishes on the windowsill near Jane. I watched as the fog cleared. The day was like a home-from-school-sick-day, when my mother would open the single-pane windows, mahogany frames, clearing away the condensation from the night’s sleep. We’d listen to a radio drama, one set in a hotel near the seaside, hands around mugs of tea. We could hear the actors breathe, sneeze, the rustle of paper, supressed coughs, giggles, seagulls, rattling of cutlery, clink of crockery. Then she’d go back to her work, sweeping, wiping, lifting, folding, pushing, feeding, steaming, boiling, carrying, wiping again, placing, dragging, sewing, preparing, chopping, cutting, peeling, slicing, ironing, setting, washing, drying, lighting, sweeping again, ironing. Sometimes crying.

‘I love Tom, you see,’ Jane said, striding out, criss-crossing the Ward moving away from the draught. ‘Have you seen him? He went up the yard under an hour ago because there’s a cow calving. You know if he’s not up soon I’ll need to bring him down the calf-jack myself, none of you seem likely to stir out. Aren’t you all a right lazy bunch? And signs on you all, you could all do with a breath of fresh air.’

Jane wasn’t wrong.

By lunchtime Hegs was heaping red jelly from an ivory bowl into another ivory bowl of ivory ice cream with an ivory plastic spoon clutched in his fat ivory fingers. Claire was bolt upright on the chair beside him, pulling faces at the ritual that was being inflicted on the dessert.