I shake my head. I need to establish some authority. Tony takes his glasses off and massages the bridge of his nose. He puts them back on and squints at the window, noticing something, half standing up to get a better look. And now Malcolm’s seen it too. I turn in my chair and there’s an ambulance pulling into the car park. A quick burst of lights, a flash of yellow and green.

‘Fuck me,’ Malcolm says to nobody in particular. ‘The bastards! Who’ve they done away with this time?’

After lunch I hover in the day room. Gill is nowhere to be seen. The other staff come in and deal with toilet trips and refills and then disappear. Nobody gives me any instructions. May beckons me closer and I kneel by her chair so she can whisper.

‘Mum let me serve the tea,’ she says counting each statement off on her fingers, ‘I wore the dress with the blue buttons. I saw him running into the trees. Such a little thing. And he never came back. They won’t let me out to find him. But you understand.’ She looks at me, so directly, so full of pleading. ‘They say he doesn’t talk but he speaks to me. I read things in his eyes. You understand, don’t you?’

I don’t have time to answer. Alison is coming towards me from the kitchen. Two paramedics stride through the corridors and out the front entrance.

‘If you see him you’ll tell him where I am?’ she says.

‘There you are, Sana. Have you managed to have a break yet?’

‘No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure–’

She waves away my apology, ‘we’re going to have to finish your training tomorrow, I’m afraid.’

‘Ok.’

She rubs her hand over her eyes and beckons for me to follow her out into the corridor.

‘There was a death,’ she says, in a whisper, ‘Flora. A sudden stroke. Gill’s trying to contact the family before we release the body and there’s paperwork. Everything’s up in the air.’

I try to picture Flora, try to remember if I was ever introduced. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘There’s one thing,’ she says, ‘you can say no if it’s too much.’

‘Anything.’

‘Can you sit with her? Make sure the room’s straight and clean, make sure she’s got her dignity for when her relatives arrive?’

I nod. There are noises from the day room now. A woman is screaming. There are groans. Someone shouts something about wanting to go home.

She squeezes my arm, ‘I’d better go and sort that rabble out,’ she opens the door and we both wince at the noise. ‘Room twelve,’ she says, then disappears.