At the bottom of the stairs, she kicked the door that housed the angry dog with the underside of her foot, and told Harold to follow. He was afraid of the dog and he didn’t want her to worry about the amount of pain he was in, so he tried to keep up with her. The truth was that his knees and palms felt spiked after his fall, and he couldn’t put any weight on his right leg. The woman told him that her name was Martina; she was from Slovakia. He would have to excuse this shithole, she said, and also the noise. “We thought this fucking place was temporary.” Harold tried to make his face look like that of someone who was used to her sort of language. He didn’t want to appear judgemental.

“I curse too much,” she said, as if reading his thoughts.

“It’s your house, Martina. You must say what you like.”

The dog was still barking and clawing the paintwork behind the door below.

“Shut the fuck up,” she yelled. Harold could see the fillings at the back of her teeth.

“My son always wanted a dog,” he said.

“It’s not mine. It’s my partner’s.” She threw open the door of an upstairs room and stood aside to let him enter.

The room smelt of emptiness and new paint. The walls were a stark white, with a purple bedspread that matched the curtains, and three sequined cushions over the pillows. It touched Harold that Martina, for all her bitterness, had taken such care over her soft furnishings. At the window, the upper branches and leaves of the tree crushed themselves against the glass. She said she hoped Harold would be comfortable, and he assured her that he would. Left alone, he eased his body on to the bed, and felt every muscle throbbing. He knew he should examine the cuts, and wash them, but he hadn’t the will to move. He hadn’t even the will to remove the shoes from his feet.

He didn’t know how he was going to carry on like this. He was frightened, and he felt alone. It reminded him of his teens; of hiding in his room, while his father crashed into bottles or made love to the aunts. He wished he hadn’t accepted Martina’s offer to stay the night. Maybe she was already phoning a doctor? He could hear her voice downstairs, although listening hard he didn’t recognize any of the words. Maybe it was her partner. Maybe her partner would insist on driving Harold home.

He pulled Queenie’s letter from his pocket, but without his reading glasses the words spilled into one another.