I’ll go forward now with the hope in my heart – in the electronic pump that circulates fluids and lubricants to my moving parts – that I will help the residents in my care enjoy the final years or months of their lives.

This is what it’s like to be me: contradictory. I’m logical, intelligent and have access to all information. But I look like a human, and I need to behave like one. They are rarely logical. Their intelligence is undermined by their emotions, and they hold little information in their brains.

This is based on limited exposure to living humans, but their recorded history and the current state of their world supports my view.

So does what happened next.

In the atrium Mr Jordan and Dr Morton were about to speak to another group of people. They were standing at the front again, and as I entered, Dr Morton called me over.

‘Winifred, you can help us now. Now we’ve told the relatives about you and the other Helpers, we need to tell the world about our work. It’s sure to get out. It’ll be all over the internet and we would prefer to manage the story as far as we can ourselves. These people are from the media – they’re journalists.’

‘Hacks,’ said Mr Jordan.

‘They have been invited here today for an announcement,’ continued Dr Morton.

‘From the CEO of a care home business,’ said Mr Jordan. ‘Which is not what great careers in journalism are built on. So they think. Which is why they’re such a rum collection.’

I looked at them. Some were very young, others quite old. Nothing much in between.

‘The age distribution is unusual,’ I observed. ‘It is skewed towards the extremes. Not the classic bell curve you would expect.’

Mr Jordan looked at me with an expression that correlates to mild amusement in my database, and then he laughed, confirming my assessment.

‘You’re right. Though who would put it like that, apart from a robot? Sorry – convincing synthetic human. Not as convincing when you talk like Mr Spock.’

‘Why do you liken me to this fictional character? Who, may I point out, was half human, half from a mythical planet called Vulcan, and not at all synthetic or, as you put it, a robot.’

‘That was more convincing. More like a woman, anyway.’

‘Are women more likely than men to correct mistaken ideas?’

He laughed again. ‘More likely to correct men, whether they’re mistaken or not.’

I think this could be construed as a sexist remark. ‘As I am intended to be a convincing woman, I shall remember that.’ I turned to Dr Morton. ‘Can you explain the unusual make-up of the audience?’