It turned out to be a great decision. We sat there talking for at least a couple of hours. She fed most of her pie to Lassoo and kept popping inside to replenish her ‘tea’. She was a right talker. She told me about her engineer father who went to Sierra Leone when she was eight years old and never returned but sent a picture of his arse to her mother every year on their anniversary. She told me that she was ‘in computers’ and had worked for the NHS and the Department for Education. Sadly, because of her ‘crumbly bones’, she had ended up flogging computers at the local PC World because it was an easy gig. She told me she got the sack from this job when she told her manager to ‘Go and fuck a puppet on the moon’. She managed to get signed off for disability benefit and claimed that she had never been happier. She did a bit of online computer skills training on the side and eventually admitted that she did like a drink once all of the day’s thinking had been done. She hardly stopped talking and I laughed more than I could have anticipated.

Anyway, we became neighbour friends, and every Saturday, if I wasn’t otherwise engaged, I would pop round to her flat and spend a couple of hours in her company.

5

The layout of Grace’s flat was identical to mine, but the ambience could not have been more different. Hers was filled with possessions she had accumulated over the years. Hardly any walls were visible behind the shelves and piles of boxes and books. Computer hardware and monitors from various decades were stacked at one end of the living room. At the window end was a desk that doubled as her dining table and her workstation. The flat smelt of uncooked sausages and hot electronics.

For our Saturday meet-ups she would always make an effort to glam herself up. Today she was wearing a flowery Laura Ashley dress and leopard-print slippers. Her hair was tied up beneath a banana-print silky scarf and her lipstick was bright cherry-tomato red. She was always a little flustered whenever I arrived. As far as I could tell I was her only regular visitor. Lassoo never made a fuss, only glancing up briefly from his cushion when I arrived, before licking his lips and falling back to sleep.

‘Come in, Gary, I’ve got the kettle on. What have you brought for the microwave?’

‘I’ve got a shepherd’s pie that’s described as new and improved and a macaroni cheese that is “organic and less than 300 calories”.’

‘Oh fuck that, I’ll have the shepherd’s pie.’

She gave me a little motherly peck on the cheek as she took the ready meals off me and strode purposefully into the kitchen.