It’s been a week now since she was admitted to hospital. She’d been making such good progress up until this morning.

Will has questions. Like, how serious does it have to be to ring someone’s family that early? And, what is a turn for the worse, exactly? He’d ask them if he wasn’t quite so scared of the answers. Another heart attack, that much he knows. And that a procedure is required, with some urgency.

The smell – that was the first thing Will registered when he arrived. Not unpleasant, but different from his previous visits to this side room. He doesn’t want to compare it to the meat counter at the supermarket, but that’s what it puts him in mind of. The scent of a human being reduced to the sum of their working parts.

Will sits beside the bed while his mum stares out of the window with crossed arms. He looks up at the clock and its jerking second hand, and wishes he could hold it still, make these five minutes last until he’s ready to let go of Nain’s arm and let her be ‘taken down’ – another phrase he’s not certain of the meaning of.

Danny is at the other side of the bed, leaning on the guard rail. Nain lays a hand on the cling film wrapped round his forearm.

‘What have you done to yourself?’ she asks. The question leaves her two words at a time.

‘His first tattoo,’ their mum almost shouts, despite there being nothing wrong with Nain’s hearing. ‘Couldn’t quite wait the three weeks till he’s eighteen.’

‘Can I see?’ Nain says into her mask, her eyes twinkling with excitement.

Danny peels away the film as though he’s unreeling an ancient scroll, revealing six symbols along his lower arm, the ink shiny and swollen and framed with red-raw skin.

Nain shakily grips his wrist. ‘Fascinating.’ She gathers her strength after so many syllables. ‘Tell me what it means.’

Danny shrugs. ‘Don’t really know. It’s Chinese writing, I think.’

Nain snatches a deep breath and pulls the mask aside. ‘What made you decide on it?’

‘The tattoo guy had this book. Found a design I liked.’

She takes a moment to appreciate it, her translucent fingertips hovering over the symbols.

Danny enjoys the attention, his expression bordering on smug. ‘You love it, don’t you, Mum?’ he asks.

‘I should probably be angry,’ his mum says, ‘but, yes, it’s very cool.’

‘She wants to get the same one,’ Danny tells Nain.

‘I only said maybe,’ his mum says.

Nain turns her head and smiles at Will. He can’t be sure, but it seems like a tiny snigger, a minute rolling of the eyes, a sharing of a private joke.