Jess got back from a weekend in Bournemouth an hour or so ago. I was sleeping off a night shift when I heard her coming upstairs and the sound of the shower turning on. It’s nice that she’s back. I don’t know why, but I like it when everyone’s here. I fill the kettle and put it on to boil, absent-mindedly picking up some dishes from the draining board and stacking them on the shelf. The dishwasher’s on the blink again – I got home at half ten this morning to find it had sicked up grey water all over the floor, and I stood for about five night-shift-fuzzy minutes trying to decide if the right thing to do would be to a) pretend I hadn’t seen it and leave it for someone else to deal with or b) unload the half-washed dishes and stack them up by the sink. In the end, I’d given a fairly hefty sigh then got on with it. Meanwhile, someone else had clearly washed them and left them to dry – most likely Rob. He was a stickler for a tidy kitchen.

With the dishes sorted and the surfaces wiped, I sit down at the kitchen table with a couple of pieces of toast. I’m so tired I feel like I’ve got jet lag, only without the exotic holiday to show for it. And with tiredness comes all the feelings I try to keep squashed down with work and the gym and all the other stuff people do to get a handle on emotional crap. I feel a bit shit that I haven’t been able to make it back down to Kent for Mother’s Day today, because I worked a late shift yesterday and I’ve got an assignment due next week that I’ve barely started, so I blew way more money than I can afford sending Mum a massive bunch of flowers. And then I went for a run, even though I was completely knackered. It helped, a bit. Not as much as the delicious three hours of sleep I’ve just had, mind you.

The guilt’s worse now that Dad’s gone, of course. My big sister Mel’s in finance, and she’s working in New York on secondment, which is a pretty reasonable excuse not to be able to make it, but it feels a bit crap to be an hour away on the train and stuck here in London because I’ve got an assignment to get done and I’ve worked a weekend shift. It’s weird. I knew that we’d be thrown straight into placements in our first year, but I thought there’d be a bit more time to – I dunno. Breathe, maybe?