I couldn’t concentrate or keep still. I went out into the hall, which was small, narrow and smelled of a mixture of noxious substances: smoke, gas, grease. There was another open door to my left, through which I could see, above a gas fire with bent bars and ropes of dust clinging to it like grey tinsel that had lost its shine, a painting of a boy with a pen in his hand. He had written the words ‘Joy Division’ on the wall and was standing back to survey his work. His face wasn’t visible, only the back of his head. Instantly, I recognised the picture as Mary’s handiwork. Something about the boy’s posture made it look as if he might turn round any second and catch me spying on him. I found the painting disconcerting; it made me want to lower my eyes. How did she do that? How could she take a brush and some paints and produce something as extraordinary as this?

Mary leaped down the stairs, landing beside me, making me cry out in alarm. ‘Here we go. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’ She was holding a plaster in her hand. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t still angry with me, why she cared that I was bleeding.

I put out my hand to take the plaster, but Mary was already ripping the paper tabs off it. Once they were gone, she put the plaster between her teeth and pulled up my shirt. I hadn’t been expecting it, and I recoiled. My back hit the wall. It was too late. She’d seen the scar, the thick pink line that divides my stomach in half. She must have seen my bra, too, having pulled my shirt up higher than she needed to.

She wasn’t interested in that, though. I could see where her eyes had landed, on my damaged skin. After the operation, I’d heard a nurse who thought I was asleep say, ‘Better hope she never puts on any weight. That stomach ever gets fat, it’ll look like an arse.’ A male nurse had laughed and called her a catty bitch.

Mary was fascinated by my scar. She stared unashamedly. I itched to yank my shirt ends out of her hand and cover myself, but I was afraid to give my own wishes precedence over hers. She wanted to look, and I knew what happened when I displeased her.

She licked her finger, wiped a spot of blood from my skin and rubbed the plaster on, her knuckle moving back and forth across the material. She’s insane, I thought as she smiled at me. It occurred to me that this so-called help might be a subtle form of attack. If her aim was to humiliate me, she’d succeeded again.

‘What do you think of it?’ she asked, nodding at the Joy Division picture through the open door. ‘Do you like it?’