Lena made a sorry face, whether for the job loss or for not having bothered to ask for his news he didn’t know.

‘Best bit is,’ he said, before either could ask if he was okay, ‘couple of days after I lost my job, Mercy asked me to move out. Talk about kicking a man when he’s down, hey?’

‘Bloody hell. I’m sorry,’ Aunty Nic said and actually sounded it. ‘Do you reckon it’s for good? I mean, people fight, need space and that. Doesn’t mean it’s over, does it?’

‘Yeah, nah. I reckon it is, though.’ As he said it he knew it was true. His jaw clenched and pain erased the world. When it ebbed and his vision returned both of them were looking at him with anxious, crinkled faces. ‘It’s fine,’ he told them. ‘I mean, I’m sad and … I’m gonna miss the kids something chronic, but … I’m fine. I’ll be fine.’

‘We should’ve known something was up, shouldn’t we?’ Aunty Nic said to Lena, fake jolly-jolly voice. ‘Knew he wouldn’t come all this way just because I had a little tumble.’

He had to walk out of the room then. It was just a bit too fucking much.

He wandered the hallways with half a plan to find a doctor and ask for some proper painkillers, but it quickly became obvious that the doctors and nurses—he wasn’t sure he could tell the difference—occupied a different dimension. They were in his field of vision, but he was never in theirs. He observed that a few civilians had somehow learnt how to flag them down and draw them through a portal to communicate with the lowly realm for a minute at a time but then whoosh, off they went again, and you could be bleeding to death from all your orifices at once and they wouldn’t see it. Literally bleeding to death, he reckoned, but if you didn’t know the correct signal, every one of these green- and-blue-clipboard-and lanyard-wielding figures would float on by, oblivious.

Lena didn’t ask why he’d taken off. Didn’t ask him anything. Looked at her phone the whole bus ride, angled so he couldn’t see the screen. Boyfriend? he asked at one point, and she shot him a look that would kill any other man. It made him smile, though. He lived for those looks growing up. Making your little sister’s face do that was the ultimate Achievement Unlocked.