‘Drink?’ she asks next, pouring a plastic cup of water from last night’s jug. ‘I just wondered if you’d had a chance to think of anyone we might call for you, Susan? No pressure. It’s just visitors, they can help when you’re…’ She trails off, as if censoring herself. ‘Visitors help,’ she finishes. There’s something in her eyes that I recognise. A distraction. A source of pain or heartache. You can just see it in some people.

I look down at the wilted salad on my plate.

‘And we wouldn’t want anyone to be worrying about you,’ she adds.

If only somebody was worrying. If only someone had noticed I didn’t get home, that I didn’t close the curtains; that I haven’t opened a window, watered the plants, or moved the car in months. I forgot to cancel the milk.

‘You need to eat.’ She pushes the plate closer to me, her voice gentle, caring. ‘These tablets will make you feel sick if you don’t line your stomach first.’

I pick up the fork, moving potato around the plate. The ache in my leg pulsates, the discomfort strangely reassuring. She watches and I find myself doing what I always have, what’s expected, old habits that even this deep-rooted loathing can’t kill off. Melting butter drops to my sheets and Kat reaches to brush it off for me. ‘We can change those, if you like. Just say.’ I part my lips just wide enough to take a small amount of food. Nausea returns but I chew through it, like a good girl. Fifty-six yet still unable to do as I please and see it through.

Kat picks at the papers and magazines on my side table. A Sheffield Star from three days ago sits beneath an old magazine covered in faces I don’t recognise.

‘I bet they’re thrilled to have their bikini bodies cross-examined, don’t you think?’ she says, flicking through the pages. ‘You bothered if I…’ She hovers it over the bin, eventually dropping it in when I don’t respond. I take another mouthful of lunch. The cold of the butter penetrates the heat of the potato. The cheese is an odd mix of strong and tasteless. Foreign on my palate. Combined, it clags and sticks in my throat. It constricts, but I keep eating.

Kat looks around, noticing my bag. The brown leather satchel gifted by Mother many years ago. ‘Have we looked in here, Susan?’ she asks. I think about the nurse who roughly opened, glanced through and buckled it back up the wrong way; too tight. ‘Would you mind if I…’ She reaches for it. Slowly. More carefully. ‘In case they missed anything before?’ It sits in her lap to begin with, just within my reach. I push food around my plate. ‘Take those,’ she says, nodding in the direction of the paper cup of medicine. I knock back the tablets, holding them on my tongue as I reach for the water. They leave a fine coating of bitterness behind.