I don’t really know how to feel about the list of sweets in my hand right now. There’s something sad about it. Like it’s the only thing left of a girl who has been murdered, and I’ve just been handed it by a detective. Like the detective has said to me, the girl’s closest kin, “We think this is hers; do you remember it?” I fold up the paper and put it in my backpack and then look at my phone. I still have twenty minutes to kill before I see my mum.

This feels like a strange place for my mum to be. Not only does she look too young to be in a home, but she also isn’t anywhere near the end of her life like the others here are. She’ll eventually leave this place, while the others will stay here until they die; and then, if I can afford it, I’ll move her somewhere else, and then somewhere else, while I carry on living my life apart from her.

I lean back again in my chair. There are a few posters up in this room. I read them, one by one, starting with the one that is closest to me and moving clockwise around the room. One says, “Be the best version of you”; another, which makes no sense, has a picture of a red rose in between clasped hands and reads, in italics, “Must be nurtured from beginning to end,” and then in big, bold capital letters, “CUSTOMER CARE”; one near the middle has ugly watercolor flowers all around its edges and has written across it in pink lettering, “Working for something we don’t care for is called STRESS. Working for something we care for is called PASSION.” All of the posters make me feel a little bit depressed about humanity. I linger on one, though, for a moment, which also doesn’t completely make sense, but sets me on edge: “You are only as old as you think you are,” it says, in blue. I go back to the colored beads. I spin them one by one on their wires. Yellow, blue, red, yellow, blue, red, blue, red, blue, red.