He never tired of this chatter all through the preparation of the meal he mashed and watered and poured into a clear plastic bottle from which he fed a piece of red tubing. He poked a finger into my mouth, cleverly finding the side where there were no teeth. Then he inserted the tube and began squeezing, very gently at first, I noticed, as the salty mixture dripped into my mouth and burnt my tongue. Then he became too ambitious and squeezed the inverted bottle harder, too hard for my complex swallowing mechanism to cope with. I gagged and spewed the mixture back through my nose. He stood back looking briefly disappointed and at the same time concerned as he glanced at the door through which Anna had left, then back to me. After a few awkward seconds in which he seemed at a loss as to what he should do, he looked down at my chest and put his nose in front of my mouth to satisfy himself I was not asphyxiating. He mopped the sick from my face and clothes with a towel he left to soak in a bucket of hot water. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re not keen on old Tom’s cooking? Never mind. Not to worry, not to worry at all. We’ll soon sort something out, won’t we? Tell you what, let’s go and find your room. They should have decided where you’ll be sleeping by now. I’ll bet you’re dying to see it. Yes?’

He pushed me into a dark, carpeted hall, the floorboards creaking under the wheels of the chair, past a staircase to a room I guessed served as some kind of reception or office. From inside the room came a garbled discussion between Anna and, I assumed, the man who had come out to meet her on our arrival. Tom was at my side, listening, dropping all pretence of paying me direct attention. He leaned towards the door, cocking his head, thin daylight lightening the dark hollows beneath his eyes. Was this old man worried that the two inside were talking about him? A chair scraped the floor in the room, footsteps came near and Tom snapped out of his trance and knocked.