Yet here is George and he’s in a hurry because he ‘has lots to be getting on with’. The doctor weighs and pokes him and asks about his prostate and his bowels, and George is as indignant as always and asks what the hell it has to do with him. The doctor chuckles and wishes cantankerousness and indignation could be bottled and given to people who are fading. He imagines injecting his elderly patients with a fizzing shot of George, right in the backside. His marvellous medicine would make them leap off the examination table, keen to complain about the service.

He writes George a repeat prescription for the maximum length of time possible, and for the first time it’s not because he doesn’t want to see him. He signs his name with a flourish and in a moment of madness he goes to shake George’s hand. George just stares at it, of course, and his face suggests the doctor has dropped his trousers and pulled out his penis for George to greet.

Betty has an appointment after George.

‘Need another prescription to cure your mad cow disease?’ he says.

‘Ha-di-ha-ha,’ Betty says. ‘You need a trip to Specsavers, Mucky Malcolm.’ She points to a splotch of egg yolk on his shirt.

‘Don’t forget to tell him about your flatulence.’

‘I won’t. Did you show him your piles?’

‘I don’t have piles!’ George roars, loud enough for the whole waiting room to hear.

‘Oh dear, George, any louder and we’ll all start dancing.’

‘Dozy tart.’

‘Debbie Downer.’

‘Greedy pig.’

‘Billy Bullshit.’

A laugh blasts out of him before he can stop it. Betty’s face lights up in victory, just as her name is being called.

George sits in the waiting room, and tells himself he’s not waiting for Betty, just having a break before he braves the bus home. He stands up as she ambles towards him in her matching ill-fitted livery, stumbling slightly on the ridiculous stacked trainers she wears that she claims help weight loss and balance. (‘They saw you coming,’ he told her, when she brought them round to show him.)

‘Still not been committed to the funny farm, then?’ he says now, as he wrestles himself into his coat.

‘No. They don’t know I spend time with you so they think I’m completely normal.’

George scoffs so hard he almost spits out his teeth.

The receptionist watches them walk off and thinks how quickly George has replaced his lovely wife, and how sad it is that she dedicated her life to a man who didn’t seem to care about her at all.

Dan

(Come out when you’re ready)