Our shifts haven’t overlapped in a while. Not that I’d realized – I have enough on my plate – though on some level I must’ve been relieved. I have often wondered: did I commit a small crime during childhood that I can’t remember? Have I accumulated so much bad karma that I must be punished with Alanna Hallett appearing at regular intervals throughout my life? She never sat next to me in primary school and, in college, she once told me she’d had enough of my depressing pigeon face and to get the fuck out of her life already. What have I done to deserve this?

I stand in the doorway, watching her slender, spandexed legs strain as she slides all the way forwards on to one elbow and angles her head to evaluate the stability of her construction. I drop my bag on the floor. Alanna is startled. Just like Bambi.

‘Ruth! Jesus!’

‘What’s that?’

‘Wait a second!’ she says. ‘I have big news.’

I stand to the side with my arms crossed, waiting for her to move so that I can finally reach my desk and sink into my chair. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep. I haven’t for days. Not that I want to explain the break-up to her: I don’t think I could handle her compassion. We have history. She might be the only person I have ‘history’ with who’s left in my life, now that Neil’s gone, which is depressing.

In any case, we’ve put the past behind us. These days we don’t bring it up. Although it’s not like she’s given me a chance to forget: she looks exactly the same as she did at twenty, when she slept with him. Neil swears he didn’t find her attractive back then. Of course, it’s a lie. Because he did sleep with Alanna and I do know now that Neil is a liar.

Can you blame him? Who doesn’t love pretty young girls? ‘She’s delicious,’ Melissa said, when she gathered us to meet the new junior nurse. I remember Alanna appearing next to her like a six-year-old emerging from behind her mother’s skirt.

‘Helloooo,’ she said cutely. I couldn’t believe it was her. I thought I was rid of her when she dropped out of college.

Alanna flicks her white-blonde fringe out of her eyes and examines the house of cards again. The pointed tip of her tongue peeks out at the side of her mouth, as she stands on her toes – how tiny she is – and places one last card on top of the pile. The construction is uniformly pink, like the crop top she is wearing. She’ll be bollocked for it by one of the senior nurses in three, two, one …

‘Alanna, that top …’ I begin but I stop mid-sentence.