‘Bye,’ I whispered to myself.

‘I’m Angela Lansbury, you know?’ squealed Jane as she woke. ‘Remember me, Angela?’ She began mime typing with the leather gloves.

‘Indeed I know, Janey,’ I whispered. ‘I mean, Angela.’ And she smiled.

I fixed my oxygen mask back firmly on my face and tried to keep my own counsel, think things through, make a decision.

*

Friday passed in a blur of loneliness, for Alex, the boys, for my mother, and much sedated sleep. The cathedral rang out for the angelus at six. Michal arrived and tugged a plastic apron from the pull-out roll that hung outside the door. I tossed and turned in and out of wakefulness with an odd taste of sweet caramel. The plastic aprons unravelled in a heap like butcher’s sausages.

Margaret Rose was perched on her bed like the last summer peach in an ivory fruit bowl.

Michal balanced a cereal bar in his pale mouth, while tying the flimsy apron at the small of his back. He was fussing with my magazines and books and began wiping the face of Heaney with a rag cloth.

I snapped.

‘You always so angry?’ he said. ‘Why, always so so angry cococococo?’

‘Don’t cococococo me. What the fuck type of noise is cococococo’ I spat in a whispered hiss.

‘Co? Co? What is? What you going on about, lady? Why you getting so angry all of the time, is it that you’re sick? And all the time angry at your nice Husband. How does he stick you? Hmm?’ Fuck knows. Michal went on wiping. But his face was sympathetic, his eyes glossing over with a film of exhaustion.

‘You think I’m stupid, huh?’

‘No, no, that’s not what I …’

‘Just another stupid Polish man, because I fill your tea every night and give you biskits, you think I don’t know history and books, your history, mine, because I clean for you? I will be kind with books. No need for worry.’

I thought of him calling out to me in the scanner.

‘No, no, it’s just … I’m very sorry,’ I said, quietly.

‘Yeah, well, I know how special books are. I know …’ he said, and placed the book down gently. ‘But no need to be so cross. Is it special?’

‘Not really. My father gave it to me.’ I nodded at Heaney.

It was the first time Father’d shopped alone and it was the only personal gift he’d ever bought for me, probably because it was on a Best Sellers’ list in one of those bookshop chains with a three-for-two offer, poetry and two cookery books, one for me. Sorry for everything, here’s some poetry. Enjoy. Your mother is leaving me. Goodbye. And all I’ve done for her. I gave her a cookery book. Goodbye. Your mother is leaving me. I was so happy with the book, but then he said that he’d watched him on the Late Late Show, Heaney, or some documentary and that he was a good farming man, like himself and not a poof, like most poets.