I made her some tea, which she seemed to tolerate fine, so I set about in the kitchen putting together macaroni cheese while Bette sat in the alcove and watched television.

The package was under my bed. I was aware of it as I pottered around the kitchen, but I left it where it was. I delivered a steaming bowl of macaroni cheese to Bette and she wolfed it down, and then eventually, after she had watched one full episode of Midsomer Murders and half of a talk show, I looked over to see that she had fallen asleep.

I turned off the television and pointed her to bed, and as she shuffled off down the hallway she turned and, like nothing had happened, said, ‘Don’t stay up too late, Cathy dear.’

I didn’t correct her. But I did stay up too late, thinking. The philosopher had made me feel strange. Strange about lines. I had been drawing them left, right and centre. Between myself and home, between me and Mum, between me and Nassim and this situation. Too quick to draw a line underneath it. I hadn’t changed my plans, but it wouldn’t hurt to think about it all a bit more, to try to get my head around it while I was still in the bodily experience of it. Once I took the pill, it would be over, and maybe there was something to think about, or to feel, or to learn or experience while I was still in it. I didn’t want the same thing as last night, the attempt to swallow, the ugly spitting. The distress that caused.

I turned off the kitchen light and sat on the bed, again not retrieving the package. It could wait a day. I climbed, exhausted, under the covers, and as I did, something slipped from the side table and onto the floor with a small metallic tingle. I leaned out and picked it up. A tiny crank handle. The handle to the music box. I dropped it back onto the floor next to the bed and then rolled over and fell asleep.

When I woke again, suddenly, after what seemed like only moments, I was thirstier than I could ever remember being. The water from the kitchen tap drummed loudly on the metal sink before I got a glass under it. I needed water, so much water. I gulped until I was gasping for air, and when I had quietened down, underneath the thin racing tick of the plastic clock, I heard my grandmother snoring. I stepped through the dark hallway to where her bedroom door stood ajar, wan lamplight spilling out across the worn and gritty carpet. And there was Bette, lying on top of her covers still in her clothes, on her back, an ungainly open-mouthed snore emanating from the back of her throat on every in-breath, and a box of opened painkillers on the bedside table beside her.

I was filled with pity for the old woman in her cluttered, filthy room. Her bandaged arm was caught awkwardly beneath her body, so I stepped into the room and started trying to manoeuvre it out, gently at first, but then, when Bette showed no signs of being disturbed, with more force, wiggling Bette from side to side to inch the poor arm out. Eventually it came free and I laid it gently on the bed beside her, and then picked up the box of painkillers from the bedside table. No way of telling if Bette had taken any on top of the two I already gave her. Or how many. Should I panic?