I curl my toes inside my boots as my chest contracts and I can feel the stitches of my mother’s mending on my favourite George Costanza socks. It’s about the only thing holding those babies together now, but she’s made them last longer than any pair of novelty socks could hope for, even if they’re more black cotton thread than sock and Costanza’s face looks like a cat’s bum. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t even recognise him any more. I bloody love those socks but they’re doomed. The last of their kind. Discontinued, what a concept. My mother. What a concept.

Sixty-three. Hot breath on my shoulder. Ribs pounding.

Passando, passando. Coming through, it whispers.

A fistful of latex-covered fingers that smell like bolognese pinch my cheek then force one of my eyes open. He’s right down in my face now and I can see the blackheads on his nose. Must be a million, maybe a million and a half. He definitely needs to pay more attention to his skin and I think about saying it. Sixty-six, sixty-seven. The pain is green.

I hold his starting-to-panic gaze with my one staring eye and I bet myself his mother made his lunch. ‘Jesus Christ, what the hell?’ he says, and I know if I smile now it’ll freak him out even more.

I do it.

Seventy-one. Kaleidoscope eyes, the pain is blue.

Vamos, chica. Come on. Come on.

Seventy-four. Seventy-six. Seventy-nine. And I wonder.

What if I did.

Then it’s over, because Jesucristo he’s ruined it now and I’ve lost the count. I gulp a massive breath in, coughing when it hits my lungs, then swing my legs off the chair, grab my sweatshirt and backpack off the floor, and get the hell outta Dodge. I leave the guy catching flies with his mouth and wondering what the hell just happened, and I feel kind of bad for the scare. Because I’ve got no beef with him really, but he wouldn’t know the first thing about fear.

I walk past the reception and toss out, ‘Put it on our tab, love,’ from the side of my mouth, knowing that Lady High Hair there probably already emailed the invoice before the job was even done. We’re practically VIPs here, my mother and me; every six months on the knocker, scale, clean, polish and anything else that comes our way. I’d consider us reasonably messed up, but our choppers are exceptional.

The waiting room’s packed and none of them look any happier than me to be here. I look over at the glass door that will take me outside, along the high street to the Tube and home on the Victoria Line, and I’d give a couple of prized molars to be through it already. But back there has left me feeling a bit shady and I feel the need to sit down. I see an empty plastic kid’s chair in the corner near a table overflowing with magazines and crayons and loose felt-tip pens. My feet carry me there, and before I know it, I’m squashed into the chair thinking, I bloody love my feet when they do that.