She has mentioned it thousands of times, but Gill says it doesn’t do any good to let her get worked up. The boy is special. The boy has hair like fire. He’s always running. Sometimes she wants to catch him and sometimes she’s desperate to let him get away. I hand her a spoon and she holds it up to her face like she’s looking for her reflection.

‘You’ll know him when he comes won’t you? You’ll bring him to me?’ she says.

I stand with the trolley for a minute and watch them all. They doze in the ugly chairs. Everyone angled towards the TV, like it’s a jinn that has them hypnotized. Almost visiting time. There’s a quiz show on, and when someone opens the door it has to compete with the sound of an advert for double-glazing from the radio in the staff room. Why not book a free, no-obligation quote from one of our expert advisors today? Someone grabs my arm. I jump and the cups and saucers on the trolley rattle.

‘Albert! You gave me a scare.’

‘Did I my love? Did I? I’m very sorry.’ He looks at me, pushing his head right back into the chair. I move round to the front of him. Not too close. His eyebrows are wilder than ever. Like he’s been trying to make himself look mad.

‘What can I get for you?’

‘Did I ever tell you about El Alamein?’ he says.

There’s a blast of music through the doorway. Where you from you sexy thing? a phone ringing, something dropped in the kitchen. It’s hard to concentrate. I pour him a cup of tea. Three sugars and no milk. I offer him the plate of biscuits but he waves it away and holds onto my sleeve.

‘You remind me of one of the desert girls,’ he whispers, ‘the girls with the dark hair. In the day they covered it up, but at night…’ He winks.

Gill is watching me from the doorway, tapping her watch. I move the trolley on, steering wide around Albert’s chair. He recites the tail end of a poem at me as I leave. The same one as usual. De-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum. I think it’s a shame and a sin, for a lion to go and eat Albert, and after we’ve paid to come in.

I think of lions and deserts and women with chiffony veils wafting about beckoning men into caves. I’m sweating now. The heat always up too high when the relatives come. I try to smell myself, without anyone noticing, to check for dark patches under the arms of my uniform. There’s no time to do anything about it.