‘Do I?’ I say, feeling belligerent. ‘Why?’

‘You know how we thought she was aspirating this morning?’

I grunt in response.

‘Well, ah, you know—she’s kind of been near the end …’

‘Is she dead?’ I ask bluntly.

The nurse begins to stammer. ‘Well, I—think so. I mean …’

‘What do you mean you think so? Is she dead or not?’

‘I don’t know. I want you to come and have a look. That’s your job!’

I sigh. ‘Is she breathing?’

‘No, she hasn’t taken a breath for at least five minutes.’

I bite my tongue. I know what the nurse is doing. She knows as well as I do the patient is dead but she doesn’t want the responsibility of calling it. I wonder what on earth she thinks is going to happen—that Mrs Davies will wake up after she’s told me she’s dead and then she’ll be blamed for—what? Calling a false death?

No, I think bitterly. In the ridiculous and unlikely event of Mrs Davies rising like Lazarus down in the morgue—despite the fact she never will, except in a horror movie—the nurse wants me to cop the blame.

I walk over to Mrs Davies’s bedside, where the nurses are speaking in hushed tones. I look down. Mrs Davies is indeed dead. I sigh. ‘I think she’s dead.’

The nurses look affronted, as if I should have put it more delicately. But I don’t believe in euphemisms when it comes to death. Saying ‘she’s passed’ or ‘she’s left us’ doesn’t change anything. Passed on what exactly? An auction? Left us for where—another house?

I go through the motions, then hurry out of the room. In my haste, I nearly walk straight into the cleaner, standing with her mop outside the door.

‘Maybe don’t go in there yet,’ I suggest. ‘She’s just … died.’

The cleaner, an old Croatian lady I’ve seen on the ward before, doesn’t look surprised. ‘We must always be ready for death,’ she croaks unexpectedly in her thick accent.

‘Uh, yeah,’ I say, trying to walk past her.

‘He comes like a thief in the night.’

I stop. ‘Sorry?’

‘Thessalonians,’ she says, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Death comes like a thief in the night and we must always be ready.’

I’m lost for a response so walk away, feeling enormously unsettled. A thief isn’t welcome in my home, let alone Mrs Davies’s hospital room, but he’s come anyway and stolen her last breaths with little regard for anyone but himself.

‘Creepy Croatian cleaner,’ I mutter, feeling spooked. Who gets around in dark hospital wards saying that death comes like a thief in the night? Outside the rooms of dead patients, for God’s sake? Like, time and place, lady! Too soon!

‘Can you call her husband?’ the nurse asks, approaching from behind and making me jump.