‘I’m planning a trip to Chester Dam. My wife would turn it into a journey to hell. Gordon is absolutely hopeless at everything he turns his hand to. They wrecked all my camping trips.’

Neville Coyte’s eyes appeared to be welling with sympathetic tears.

‘There’s a grandchild, but he’s no good either. I’m thinking about trying this big strong broth of a girl, useful around a campsite. And a lesbian, so I wouldn’t have to worry about her having a crack at me, and Norma getting jealous. What do you think? You ever have anything to do with poofters of the fairer sex?’

Neville was dabbing a monogrammed handkerchief at his eyes.

‘I know, Nev: you can’t rely on anyone. Not even to stay alive. It’s just you and me from here on in. Good day to you.’

Ron shuffled back to his room, where he would sit for the evening in front of the ABC. He liked to fall asleep to Letters and Numbers. That girl who wrote up the answers kept him going. Her and this trip to Chester. He’d get the car, he’d find a travelling companion, he’d drive to the camping store for a primus stove, and then off into the blue yonder. It sounded like a plan.

Yet he couldn’t drift off. Something was buzzing around his head like a blowfly trapped between panes. He shuffled to his single wardrobe, bent down to the drawer that was filled with a short-sleeved, collared, checked cotton shirt for every occasion—red check on navy, navy check on white, white check on grey, grey check on tan, tan check on red—and slid out his secret.

He shut his bedroom door. He was safe: Norma was in hospital, and Gordon wasn’t coming back. Anyone else didn’t matter. The staff, Chogies from India or wherever, he didn’t count as sentient beings. They couldn’t be, to do the things they had to do for those old people.

The brown envelope opened like an enchanted castle.

Norma had been at him for months to make his room ‘homey’: another tactic to make herself feel better about dumping him. Put up photos, stack your books, bring in your stamp albums, anything to distract you from her perfidy. But Ron wanted the very barrenness of his prison cell to make a point to visitors. Nobody should form the impression that Ronald E. Grimes JP accepted his fate!