Policy dictates that we must lock our people in like children at 8 p.m., so the guests say their goodbyes early. There’s a recent trend, I’ve noticed, in popular culture, concerning the hilarious adventures of senior citizens who’ve managed to escape the long arm of eldercare. Let me tell you: the outcome tends to be less entertaining than those airport paperbacks will have you believe. We prepare the patients for the night. Miss Phyllis looks dejected as I take her back to her room. Before the war, she was a cabaret singer. And during it they toured hospitals, keeping up the soldiers’ morale. I know she longs to be out on the piano bar at night, in a sparkly gown, sitting on the wooden steps, holding a Martini, spearing a single olive on a toothpick. I pour her a mug of sweet tea instead and hold it out so she can rattle a teaspoon inside. Though her hands shake, she has a definitive air about her: she is quick and efficient in stirring the sugar. I put the mug down next to the press shot in which she is the second chorus girl from the left. She lifts a hand, points at the picture.

‘That, my dear Ruth, was a wonderful party,’ she says before closing her eyes.

Home: I open a new bottle, pour a glass of white wine, add three ice cubes: ice-cooler. The cubes clink against one another, making me self-conscious. My stomach rumbles. I open a can of pimento olives and I sit on the floor in front of the sofa. I skewer an olive; its red insides spill out. A wonderful party. I don’t know where to start. I chew on the olive, the kick of the chilli making my gums itch. After two glasses, I feel quite drunk.

Sleep still doesn’t come to me easily. Sometimes in the evening I lie on my back on the floor for so long that the nubs down my spine start to hurt. I watch the red chromosomes on the clock display of the DVD player, as they change into the night. I think about things that make me upset.

He and I are taking a trip to the countryside to check out some cliffs. It’s a weekend trip; his outdoor phase. We take trips every weekend that month. When we reach the site we walk halfway to the edge, then he drops to the ground, and I kneel next to him to ask what he is doing. Come here with me, he says, feel the ground with your underside, like this, like a lizard, and I do it as he does it next to me. On the top, we hold hands and look down and we do not fall.