The difficult cabinet is the one to the right. It’s where the corpse is hidden. It contains Neil’s body weight in grain. I look at the jigsaw of stacked goods: variously sized bags of quinoa, chia, sesame and giant cous cous fill the gaps between the rectangular granola, vialone nano, sushi rice, basmati, barley. Have you ever wondered why they make the characters in cereal ads so over-excitable? They’re compensating: this isn’t even real food. It’s so beige. I drag the big baking pot out of the bottom cupboard – the witchy, red one with the handles that was too cumbersome to cook with even when two of us lived here. I rip the tops off all the bags and boxes, and pour the grain inside. When I am done the pot is full and the cupboard is empty. I look into the mouth of the pot at the seeds, the sprouts, the clusters: so many different ways to be a unit.

In the Goldfish Bowl, we keep two glass pots on the reception counter. The large one is filled with pink and yellow sweets, the smaller one with one-pound coins. For one pound a pop, the visitors can guess how many sweets are in the large pot. We want to raise a thousand pounds for elderly people in need. Melissa’s idea.

Not our elderly people of course, who pay three times as much per month; other elderly people. The small pot is half full, the other to the brim and sealed shut. The sweets at the bottom have begun to calcify and melt into one another. When I am bored at my desk I look at them and try to figure out which ones still count as singles, which as an agglomeration. Only Mona knows the secret number. Tradition dictates that only the most senior nurse should know. I swirl a finger in the grain, feel the dry seeds attach themselves to my fingers. What else?

The laundry. I put on the laundry this morning. It now pushes its face against the glass of the washing machine. Hanging the laundry is the worst job. I hate it because there’s no immediate reward. I still have to wait for the clothes to dry, then collect them, iron them; all activities in themselves more satisfying than the act of hanging the laundry.