‘We’ll see ourselves out.’ Elly reached out a hand and ruffled the fur under the dog’s neck.

As soon as she heard the front door close, Erica went back upstairs to bed, closely followed by her canine companion.

Shirley hated having to work weekends, but as a carer at a nursing home she didn’t have much choice. The shifts were on a rota, and that Sunday it was her turn to do a weekend day shift.

Leaving Kayla and Grant both sleeping in their beds, she got into her small blue Fiat, in a bad mood, and drove from her house on Rawlyn Road to the Hinton Grange Care Home in Cherry Hinton.

On her journey she listened to the radio in an attempt to cheer herself up, but even the happy beat from the pop songs that played couldn’t lift her mood, and the low grey clouds outside did nothing to help.

As she pulled her car into the care home car park she angrily turned off the radio, more irritated by the music than soothed by it, and pulled the car into a parking space.

Shirley sat for a moment, looking at the building she worked in. It looked particularly depressing when the sky was grey and, despite the pretence that it was a happy place, the weather reflected the reality.

Getting out of the car, she straightened her uniform and made her way into the home.

An elderly man who was suffering with severe Alzheimer’s was in the corridor, trying to walk with the aid of a Zimmer frame. By his side was Maxine, another nurse at the home, making sure he didn’t topple over. Maxine looked at Shirley and welcomed her with a warm smile that was not reciprocated.

Despite the best efforts of the cleaning staff, the place still had a strange smell of age and death. Shirley hated it but she needed the job. Grant’s salary alone was not enough for them to live on. Marrying a window cleaner had not been in Shirley’s plans, but life had a funny way of throwing up surprises.

Shirley entered the staffroom and went over to the board to check who she would be in charge of that day. To her disappointment she saw she was on bedpan duties, and her list included a number of male residents. As Shirley wrapped the blue polythene apron around her large waist, she cursed her recent luck.

For a while, life had been good enough, but recently she had felt stressed and unhappy. She disliked her job and when she was at home she had to contend with a spoilt, difficult daughter, who constantly reminded her that she wasn’t her biological mother. Shirley was a lot of things but she wasn’t thick. She found herself looking at her life and wondering where it had all gone wrong.