Reaching the wheelchair, she releases the brake and pushes Flo out of the dim, stuffy room. She rolls her across the patio, down the ramp and into the sunny garden. At each rotation of the wheels, Flo’s expression grows alert, her eyes keener.

‘Things gotta change, my love,’ Jess says. ‘This can’t go on. None of it. For you an’ all. This place ain’t healthy. Not right. Not for you. But Jess ain’t leaving you to the dark. In our time together, there’s going to be loads more fresh air, light, exercise. Maybe even music. What do you say?’

‘Shut your fucking mouth.’

Jess stops. Though better prepared now for this kind of response from her client, it’s a familiarity with the verbal abuse that brings her to a standstill. ‘Where’d you . . .’ Jess disregards her own query and pushes the wheelchair further across the lawn in the direction of the grove. ‘That’s not very nice, Flo. I’m not your enemy, love. I’m here to be your friend. If you’ll let me. So why don’t you tell me about these beautiful flowers. You choose them?’

‘Shouldn’t be here.’

‘I wish I knew the names of trees too. I love them but couldn’t tell you what any of them are called. Bet you could tell me.’

‘You’re not fit to be a mother.’

This time Jess stops with a finality that suggests the wheelchair will not advance one inch further across the lawn. Her patience with the woman in the wheelchair ends in a heartbeat. A nerve has not merely been touched but stamped upon. The noises of the distressed birds rise as Jess’s surprise melts into rage.

‘Out! Bitch!’ This, barked from the hunched figure sat in the wheelchair.

White with anger, Jess snatches her hands from the chair’s handles as if they glow red. And she’s running to the house, abandoning Flo on the lawn. The bird cries grow to a din, hastening if not chasing her out of the garden.

Inside the living room, Jess rips at the remaining skin above her cuticles and retreats deeper inside the unlit, cluttered house. One side of her face swells. Her client’s brittle words flourish inside her mind. They cackle, loop, repeat. Words she’s heard before.

Jess sinks into the musty sinus of the vicarage and feels herself reduced to no more than a shadow upon the threshold of the living room. As if possessing reaching fingers, the landfill of the hall scrapes her ankles and she vanishes more than withdraws to where the fanlight’s vivid rays do not reach. Where darkness cloaks her.

Outside, in the distance, Flo talks kindly as if a child stands before her chair. Or maybe she speaks to the birds with the clear expectation that they might be listening.