As soon as I opened my eyes in the mornings, I began listening out for the slow whirring progress of the Schindler elevator bringing her up. Hearing her knock at my door – seeing her there when I opened it – watching her set down her big doctor’s bag on the carved chest beneath the window and take out her pots of wax and her various creams and cloths – hearing her asking me, in her quiet way, to please take a seat so she could begin – these were the things I lived for. I looked forward to them more than anything else in the world. The rest of my days – the birthday parties, the baby showers, the weddings, the funerals – all of it passed in a dull blur, and I can honestly say that I was never happier in my whole life than when Precious was there, close to me, moving around my chair, turning away from time to time to pick up a different pot or a fresh cloth, asking me to tip my head a little to the left or a little to the right, forward or back.

My only difficulty was that I had no idea what she thought of me. She was always so shy and deferential in my presence – so silent and business-like in the way she went about her work – that it was impossible to tell what was going on inside her head, let alone her heart.

If I ever tried to make eye contact with her while she polished, she blushed and looked away and focused instead on whichever part of my scalp she was busy with at the time. When she was finished she packed her things away in her big bag and bobbed another of her funny little curtseys and left.

At the end of six weeks we had hardly exchanged a single word; I still had no idea what she thought of me, if she had grown even the slightest bit fond of me during our time together. For all I knew, I meant no more to her than any other object she’d been asked to polish; for all I knew I was no more important to her than a brass candlestick or a canteen of silver cutlery.

And then one day, as she was bending over me so that her cheek was quite close to mine, I saw that her eyes were full of tears.

‘Precious?’ I said softly. ‘Is there something the matter?’

At first she shook her head and continued polishing as before, but after a while her tears began to pour down over her face. She let go of her cloth and it fell from her hand onto my lap. She hung her head and chewed her lip, and then she looked up into my eyes as if she had something serious and important to say but lacked the courage to do so.

‘Precious?’ I repeated gently, but again she shook her head.