Jess drifts into the hallway and gapes at the living room and at her incapacitated client whom she can’t leave until Morag comes in for the night shift. ‘I can’t get away till six earliest. I’m a carer. For a dementia patient.’

After that call ends, others are initiated by an increasingly frantic Jess, who paces the narrow spaces of the hallway as if to encourage an urgency in those she tries to contact. When she trips over one of many obstacles littering the floor, she kicks out in fury and hurls a bag down the hall like a football. Something smashes out of sight in the shadows.

Phone pressed to her ear, she listens to Morag’s interminable recorded message for the third time in as many minutes. ‘Ain’t here. Say somefing nice.’

‘Morag. Me again. I’m in a real bind. Can you please, please come in early. It’s my little girl. She’s had an accident at school.’ As if determined to smash her index finger through the phone screen, Jess ends the call and activates another. One hand on her forehead, her other fist clamps the handset to an ear as if adding force to her skull will push out the pressure within.

Haloed by the dazzling light pouring into the rear of the house, Flo is reduced to little more than a blackened silhouette within the living room, bent forward in a wheelchair. But, as if drawn to the sound of her carer’s distress in the hallway, her tatty head turns upon its withered neck. From the distant garden, a commotion begins among the birds.

Too preoccupied to notice Flo’s scrutiny, or the agitation from the garden, Jess rests her forehead against the inside of the front door. Supporting her weight with her head she appears to bow into the darkness that pools below the stained-glass wheel above her.

‘Penny! Thank Christ! Can’t get no one to answer their bloody phone today. But love, can you get up Izzy’s school? She’s had an accident. They just rang. I can’t get cover. Stuck here till six.’

Beyond the living room, the bird cries grow to a cacophony.

Into Jess’s ear pours the first smidgen of good news she’s heard all day. ‘Of course, my love. I was going that way for school pickups. I’ll leave now.’

Jess tears up but keeps emotion out of her voice. ‘Thanks, Pen. Thank you, thank you. Lifesaver. I’ll make it up.’

Through the open door to the living room, Flo continues to watch her carer. Or rather to study Jess, who hangs up, turns from the door and gingerly picks her way through the obstacles on the hall floor. Heading for the living room, she dabs her eyes, sniffs and composes herself, attempting a transformation from frantic mother to professional, dutiful carer.