The food parcels have stopped coming. Ellen’s friends have paid their dues. Letters pile up on the doormat. Poppy piddles on them and hopes for praise. Ellen always gave her a titbit if she did it in the right place but George doesn’t care. Poppy has tried weeing on other things – the carpet, George’s slippers – but all she got in return was a dry nose from dehydration.

Grease clings now to unwashed cutlery. Dust slithers through cracks and breeds like cancer. Everywhere is infected. Everywhere is tacky and smudged and stale. George sits in his chair, with the cricket on the radio, ploughing through his tins, like a sailor in a shipwreck. He eats until he sleeps, and wakes up to piss and shit, avoiding the dog’s piles and puddles as he goes. His prostate is failing him, like everything else. He holds his limp, shrivelled dick, willing it to work.

On one visit to the toilet, he opens the back door and orders the dog to leave. She seems to contemplate the idea then chooses to remain, an unwelcome guest. She invites the breeze in to join her, bringing with it the sounds and smells of life not on hold. High heels clicking. Cars braking. Children singing. School mums chatting, and the postman’s cheery whistle. All mixed in with the smell of next-door’s Wednesday roast – George has always envied this: he only got a roast on Sundays – and the earthy smell of spring.

George swears at it all. Beer cans collect by the door where he has taken aim and missed his targets (delivery men and neighbours, asking him please to stop the dog barking). He’d kill himself, but Ellen isn’t there to do it for him.

Poppy takes herself away until she is sure George is asleep, then creeps onto his slippered feet, curls herself into a ball and shuts her eyes. She is perfectly content. The smell doesn’t bother her at all.

Dan

(Dan is never going to wear those Star Wars socks again)

DAN AND ATTICUS’S SECOND counselling session passes painfully. When Dan asks Atticus why he feels he needs counselling for his loneliness, Atticus tells him, ‘An unexamined life is not worth living,’ while studying his fingernails. When Atticus asks Dan why he became a counsellor, Dan tells him the sessions are not about, or for, him. They are for Atticus.

Dan knows that personal questions are a typical response to pull the focus away from the client when things get uncomfortable. Some people hide their insecurities by exposing those of others. They are masters of what Alan loves to call ‘projection’.

Atticus’s eyes are fixed on the small green Yoda on Dan’s socks, and Dan feels he may as well be naked. ‘Is there something specific you’d like to examine in your life?’ Dan asks, while discreetly trying to tug his trouser legs down.