Anyway, John’s there, smoking away, little cloud of yellow and grey circling him like his own private raincloud. He’d been off on the sick for the best part of three months and we’d just about had enough of each other. I did the nursemaid bit and he really wasn’t one to complain, but it was draining seeing somebody that matters to you suffering like that. He’d had his kidney out, did I say? The left one. Apparently it was going to make him fit as a fiddle in time, but we hadn’t seen much evidence of that by mid-December. The scar went right the way around from the front to the back and I was changing bandages three times a day and trying to get some food and drink down him was a bloody nightmare. I think he got an infection. Had a high temperature and went a bit odd a couple of times – shouting out in his sleep and getting himself in a proper lather about this and that. He’d never talk about it when he came to and I knew better than to ask. Saw some sights during the war, did John. He was Navy. Didn’t like to talk about it, so nobody asked, and then when he did feel like talking about it no bugger was interested any more.

He was talking about Cordelia, as it goes. He was always making his little digs, though there were no meanness in it. He liked Cordelia plenty, though I did have to put myself between his eyes and her backside a few times during the first few years we were pals. Not that I blamed him. Always a one to catch the eye, is Cordelia. Even now there’s something about her that makes people’s gaze linger. I’m just the batty old woman in the wheelchair beside her, though that’s been the way of it for fifty-five years. She’s got the razzle-dazzle, or whatever you young ones might call it. I’m just a mam from Brampton.