Ian never expressly asked me to be his cleaner or his nurse. The only instruction I’d been given was the doctor’s vague request to ‘keep an eye on him’. But as the days went by I found myself asked to do more, and to improve the efficiency of my housekeeping. Ian wanted meals at particular times. He wanted his dishes cleared immediately. He noted when I’d failed to use fabric softener, and when I bought the wrong brand of milk. His temper was short, his mood often sour. He would start reading a book and then grow impatient with its weaknesses, which he would describe to me in lavish detail. In his ensuite shower, which he reached by leaning on me, hopping, doing that same odd marionette walk, he would curse loudly. After the water started running I would hear the thuds of shampoo bottles and soap hitting the floor. Later I would clean them up, and pull the hair from the drain.

One day, he called to me.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said when I approached the couch. He mopped at his forehead with a tissue. ‘I must ask something rather revolting of you.’

Before he could tell me what that was, I saw his bare, dangling feet.

‘Clippers are in the ensuite,’ he said.

I fetched the clippers and some newspaper, then kneeled in front of him and took his foot in my hand. It was cold and dry, and the nails had grown surprisingly long, curling over the squarish ends of his toes.

‘Not too short,’ he said, smiling in a way that made his lips so white they were nearly blue.

I clipped his nails as gently as I could while he breathed like a steaming iron, trying and failing to mask the pain he was in. I wondered whether the stones were trying to work their way out. I wondered how large they were, and what shape, and whether I’d one day walk into the ensuite to see them gathered in the porcelain bowl like tiny little treasures I could scoop up and keep.

How did I amuse myself through those long invalid days? Usually I would wait for Ian to fall asleep, then change the channel, or read one of the books he’d cast aside.

Eventually I decided to try to prune the monstera. It would be easy enough to do: the advice I’d read on forums was that the more savage you are, the better.

I went to the shed and retrieved long-handled secateurs, thinking I’d settle for clearing away the scorched or yellowing leaves, anything dead or dying. But once I started, it was hard to stop. I kept clipping and clipping until only the denuded spine of the monstera was left. Then I started snipping away at this central stem, chewing through the woodier parts with the secateurs until it had all come away in vertebrae-sized chunks.