‘But your name’s not…’

‘Never mind about that now! Listen, be a sport and tell her I’m asleep, got an appendicitis attack, anything…just get rid of her for me, there’s a honey.’ She shot down under the blankets, placed one hand over her eyes and gave an incredibly good performance of someone locked into a sleep so critical that permanent illness might result from its interruption.

Seymour had no time to retreat into his usual fazed shyness. He found himself opening the door to a pugnacious woman who glowered at him suspiciously.

‘She’s not feeling well,’ Seymour stammered, eyes cast down. The woman’s shoes were enormous and looked as though they could easily force a way into the room past his frail defences, with the same ruthless authority as battle ships. ‘She’s got…a very bad attack of flu. The doctor said she had to have plenty of sleep. I’m looking after her.’

‘Oh, and who are you?’

‘I’m…her brother. Just visiting, it’s school holidays…’

‘Would you mind telling her, please, that her rent’s overdue?’ said the cross lady. ‘I made it quite clear it was to be paid on the first Thursday of each month. That was our arrangement, and this is the second time she’s been late.’

‘Okay, I’ll tell her, but I’m sorry, she’s fast asleep right now. The doctor gave her…what do you call them, antibiotics. He said I was to let her sleep and not wake her up. It’s the only way to deal with flu, you can get serious complications.’ The little snippets of information gleaned from listening to years of his mother’s medical talk rolled off his tongue like oil.

The woman on the doorstep shot him an annoyed, frustrated look, but just said, ‘Very well. I’ll leave it for now, but when she wakes up, you make sure she knows to drop that rent in by tomorrow morning at the latest. Plenty of other people are after a nice flat like this one.’

Seymour nodded and shut the door, then went back to the bed. ‘Angie, why didn’t you help me out?’ he said indignantly. ‘That was a rotten thing to do, letting me cop all that! It’s dumb, forgetting to pay your rent, you get a bad name. My mum never…I reckon you’d better get up and go in and pay her right now!’