The A to Z of You and Me

C

Chesticles

‘CHESTICLES?’ YOU SAY.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Becca used to say it.’

It’s the joy in your face that takes me by surprise, and then your infectious and unfettered laugh.

‘Oh that’s lovely!’ you say. ‘And I suppose Becca ought to know. You wait, I’m going to use that all the time.’

I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone laugh so delightedly. And so delightedly at me.

I’m surprised.

I don’t know what to do. I sort of shrug modestly that I thought to say it.

It’s nice.

It’s the little details that get to me.

‘If I had a million quid, I’d totally get a boob job,’ says Laura.

I exchange a glance with Kelvin, and we agree with a microshift of eyebrows that we’ll remain silent. I stare back down into my nearly empty pint. Look at us, two seventeen-year-old no-marks who’ve gravitated like children to the two squat little stools drawn up to the sticky darkwood table. But here we are with Laura’s friends, all of them around twenty-two, and all sitting in proper chairs with backs. Laura’s finally deigned to let me come out with her. She’s in a bad place at the moment, having ditched her boyfriend of six years. I could almost persuade myself that she’s glad of my company.

‘Because men — society — it’s such a pain, isn’t it? They’re either leg men, boob men or bum men, aren’t they? It’s not fair. I mean, if you’re a woman, you can’t say you’re like a chest woman, or a lunchbox or an arse woman.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ says Becca. ‘I like a nice arse.’ She twists theatrically at the outside of her afro, and looks randily into the middle distance.

Oh, Becca.

If there is any benefit in the world to listening to my sister whinge on about her woes it’s that we get to sit at the same table as the goddess Becca. Smouldering eyes and flawless ebony skin — an instant magnet to everyone around. How pathetically feeble Kelvin and I must look in the company of Becca. And yet here we are. We’re on the stools.

‘But it’s men who make all the rules. And we’re all supposed to play by those rules. It’s bollocks. I think, you know, if you’ve got a lovely big pair of chesticles—’ and she holds her hands illustratively in front of her imagined boobs ‘—you’re already a step ahead of the game.’

‘So what are you then?’ Becca asks Kelvin. ‘Are you a boob man? Do you like a lovely big pair of chesticles?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I don’t really know. Maybe a leg man?’

I’m suddenly aware of the crapness of Kelvin’s hair. He’s got good-boy hair. Side-parting. I run my fingers through my tangles, just in case. At least mine’s long. Kelvin looks like an office junior.

‘Not a boob man?’ says Laura.

He reddens, but plunges on, shaking his head. ‘I never understood the fascination with breasts. I mean, what’s so amazing? They’re just fat-sacs, aren’t they? Fat-sacs with a cherry on top.’

There’s the tiniest pause, before both women collapse in laughter. I glance at him, and he looks bemused. They think he’s joking.

‘Any more than a handful is a waste,’ he adds.

Jesus, I don’t want to be linked with this. I’m here trying to appeal to girls — to women — and he’s giving out all the signals of inexperience. I catch myself actually shuffling my stool away from him.

‘What about you then?’ says Becca. She turns to me and gives me one of those smiles that could knock a man down. ‘Give me a shopping list so we can get you matched up. Are you a boob man or a leg man or an arse man?’

‘You’re a boob man, I bet, aren’t you?’ says Kelvin.

Here’s the thing: Becca has I think the most magnificent breasts I have ever seen. Kelvin and I have spent hours dreaming up wonderful new positions we would like to take in relation to Becca’s breasts. We both know it, and we both know the other knows it. I fix my eyes firmly on her eyes, and then gaze up at the ceiling, lean back from the table, right back on two legs of my stool. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?’

‘Aw!’ says Laura. ‘Are you reduced to begging?’

‘You must have a preference,’ says Becca. ‘What’s the first thing you look at? Go on, say you’re lusty and forget everything about personality and being a gentleman and all that. You just want, y’know, a good wooargh. What is it?’

I’m thinking boobs. I’m thinking Becca’s boobs. I know, I really should just say ‘boobs’. The word actually leaks into the middle of my tongue, but I clamp my teeth shut.

‘Boobs. Totally boobs,’ says Kelvin, with finality.

But I can’t admit it to Becca. I’ve angled my position on the stool specifically to include her breasts in my composition of the room.

‘Honestly — I really — I couldn’t choose. I’d be all over the shop. It’d be everything. I don’t think there is a boob man or a bum man or whatever.’

Mal mercifully chooses this moment to return from the bar, carrying three pints in his hands, a glass of wine in his top pocket, and a packet of scampi fries swinging from between his teeth.

‘What about you Bigbad?’ says Becca, turning away from my wriggling deceit. ‘Are you a boob man, a bum man or a leg man?’

Mal grits his teeth around the packet of fries as he knocks each glass out on to the table.

‘I’m a cunt man.’

He drops himself in his seat, and tears open the packet.

‘Jesus, Mal,’ I say.

‘What?’ he says.

Becca gives a great big hearty laugh.

‘I hate that word,’ says Kelvin.

‘Cunt?’ says my sister, brightly. ‘Oh, I like it. I think it’s funny. Cunt, cunt, cunt.’ She puts a very deliberate clean ‘t’ on the end of each word. She draws out a fag for Mal, and one for herself.

And this is it: I’m getting the first possible stirrings of a tiny inkling that Mal and Laura have a little bit of a thing going on between them. She’s laughing now very brightly and I see Mal smile to himself, a big smoky smile, looking down at the table. Pleased with himself. It strikes me because Mal never normally gives this stuff away.

How is this? How is it that this bloke can come along and be as horrible as he wants, and still come away smelling of roses? That’s the magic of Mal, isn’t it? People are just drawn to him. They do what he says. And they don’t stop him doing anything.

‘So, you’re the only one who’s not laid your cards on the table yet,’ says Becca, looking over at me. ‘Boob, bum or leg?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ I say, as honestly as I can.

‘Aw, sweet!’ says Laura.

‘No, I mean, I think I’m all of those things.’

‘A sensitive lover?’ says Becca, with a teasing little smile.

‘Well, I’m seventeen, I’ve had one proper girlfriend,’ I say. ‘What do you think?’

Becca roars with laughter. ‘Honesty! You’ll go far!’

‘What do you think, Mal? Do you think I should get a boob job?’ says Laura.

‘Yeah, go for it.’ And now all of a sudden, Mal’s an expert on the pros and cons of cosmetic surgery. ‘People get too hung up about it. Some big moral thing. Especially with women. This major pressure that somehow you’re not allowed to do this with your own body. It’s stupid.’

‘Yeah!’ says Laura, sparklingly.

‘It’s just like dyeing your hair or getting your ears pierced, isn’t it? It’s the new make-up, a nip and a tuck here and there.’

‘That’s what I think,’ says Laura. ‘You’ve got all the eighteen-year-old girls getting boob jobs for their birthday — it’s totally part of the culture. It’s just like a tattoo.’

‘I bet Mum would love to see you get a boob job,’ I say. ‘Because she absolutely loved your tattoo, didn’t she? What did she call it? A slag tag?’

‘Cranky old bitch,’ says Laura. ‘Just repeating some phrase from her church group. I bet she dined out for a month on that story. The prodigal daughter.’

‘I think she might want to get you exorcised.’

‘Do you know what they did in the nineteenth century?’ Mal dabs the ash off his fag, and speaks out the smoke. ‘When they were wearing corsets, anyway, they had these two ribs removed, here—’ and he grabs Laura by the wrist and lifts her arm, and chops his hand at her lower two ribs ‘—down here, they had them taken out so they could make the corset thinner.’

‘Ahh — Mal!’

‘And they’d lace these corsets so tight that all their organs would get pushed up into their chests.’

‘Is that true?’

‘So, you know, I don’t see the problem if you want to upgrade a couple of wasp stings into a pair of lovely funbags.’

There’s a momentary process in Laura’s eyes, before she bursts into unconvincing peals of laughter.

I think she’s thinking — What a funny guy.

I think she’s thinking — He’s lucky I’m so fine with how I am, to say something so daring.

But I know he knows.

He knows she’s not so fine with how she is. He totally knows.

The rubber tyres squeak as I am trundled along the shiny corridor by Kelvin. Nice of him to come and visit me. Ah, man, why did I let them persuade me into a wheelchair? Is this humiliating? I could walk this, easily. But I’ve always enjoyed being a passenger. It’s nice being pushed. The changing perspectives wiping themselves across my eyes. Vague shift of air in low draughts, subtly swirling temperatures, mixing with billowing acoustics as the rooms pass on by.

Could pleasures get any simpler?

‘I bet you’re sick of being asked this,’ says Kelvin from behind me, ‘but if there’s anything I can do, you will tell me, won’t you? Practical stuff or anything else. Anything.’

‘Thanks. I’m good. I’m all right. Better now I’m in here.’

‘You only have to ask.’

‘Yeah, cheers.’

‘Out the main entrance, is it?’

‘Suppose.’

The automatic doors trundle open and there’s the first thrill of unconditioned air on my knees and thighs. It envelops me completely as we push on through, lingers around my nostrils and lips, cradling my head, my neck, riffling my hair. We emerge into the open, and the brightness makes me squint. Magical nature. Makes me feel so dead and dusty and plastic. I’m an indoor animal. I don’t belong out in the wilds like this. Uncontrolled, unregulated nature, coming to get me and whisk me away.

We roll down a paved slope, the chair now gently percussive over the regular gaps between the slabs. Soothing pulse. I close my eyes to the brightness. Sun warm on my eyelids. Natural warmth.

The tyres of the wheelchair crackling consistently through microscopic grit. I register every grain, fresh and high-definition. My hearing has been calibrated for too long by the beeps of machinery, acoustics of plaster and glass, jangling fridge, throb of corrupt blood in my ears. The wind opens up the distance, wakens the trees, the leaves wash briefly and recede. It’s beautiful. It’s overwhelming. I want to inhale it all, breathe it, take it all in. But I can’t. I can’t draw deep. I manage only a pant.

We turn a tight little bend on the slope and pass through an archway into the hospice garden. And it’s beautiful too. Grand lawn with paths ribboning its low banks and gentle inclines. High wall all around. Old-looking wall, soft blushing pink bricks, crumbly pointing. Tailored, tamed nature.

The sun chooses this moment to radiate through to me, through me. It feels like — it feels like life. I can sense my corrupt blood bubbling and basking beneath the surface. All these things remind me of you: you and me in our favourite place up at the top of the valley, gazing down.

‘Beautiful,’ I say out loud to myself. Out loud to you. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Yeah,’ says Kelv, the only ears to hear.

Rolling peacefully forward, we pass the flowerbeds, all these carefully chosen specimens. Amazing, amazing, that these delicate petals have unfurled from the earth, vivid sunlit colours, calling out to nature, calling the humans to come, come and cultivate.

‘Look at that,’ I say. ‘Still got their verbena. They’re lucky.’

‘Yeah?’

‘They were all wiped out the last couple of years. Hard frost. Must be the wall keeping them sheltered.’

‘Right.’

‘And alliums,’ I tut, fondly.

Of course it’s you I imagine I’m talking to, not Kelvin. It’s you I can sense pointing at the seed heads, looking over at me, your eyes delighted at the collection of bobbing heads. You speak a sentence to me, all blurred enthusiastic tones, and I can hear you say –

Huuuge!

— and you grin and turn away.

‘There are roses, and there are non-roses,’ says Kelvin. ‘I only see non-roses.’

‘The big globey flowerheads, there. They’re alliums. And, look, there’s scabius. Bees land on it, get the nectar, and it sends them to sleep. All zoned out.’

‘Oh yeah, look. Stoned.’

‘Yeah.’

I’ve bleeped ten thousand little packets of allium bulbs through the till at the garden centre in the late summer sales. Plant early autumn. I wonder how many of the ones I’ve sold are reaching out to this warm sun, dappled across the region’s back gardens? I wonder if I sold these ones here? That could be my life’s achievement. Maybe I’d settle for that.

We resume our journey, and round a corner of gentle wispy grasses that bow and flutter in the soft breeze. The sun urges warmth on to my knees as it burns through the thin cloud.

Given time, you and I would have had a garden. We would have had a little plot, and we would have taken such good care of it. We’d have had a clump of scabius to please the bees, and wispy grasses lining a pond.

Given time.

I remember all the times you tried to get me to apply for the garden design course. All those reminders to get my CV into shape.

I can see you now, pulling on your coat, gathering up your keys, pointing at your desk, saying, ‘It’s all there in that bundle of papers. Three courses you could apply for. The deadline’s in July, so you’ve got time.’

I don’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Too soon, too soon. July was an age away. And how is anyone supposed to get enthusiastic about scratching their CV together? A piddling few GCSEs. A couple of A levels. Who would ever want me?

‘Just have a look through them,’ you said. ‘You totally know your stuff. Come on, one small change is all it takes. If you fill in this one piece of paper now, you’ll thank yourself as you cherry-pick the best jobs and sip champagne through the summer.’

It was a good fantasy.

Kelvin and I crest the top of a low rise, follow a gentle curve and roll down the other side, and arrive alongside a bench. Kelvin heaves the chair into a stable position, and settles on the seat beside me. We exchange a brief look, a brief smile, before gazing at the garden, letting the silence set in with the sun. Kelvin takes off his glasses and begins to clean them with his T-shirt.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in to see you before now,’ he says, lifting and huff-huffing on the lens. ‘I thought you might want to get your bearings for the first few days. How was the move from your flat?’

‘It’s all wrapped up, there’s people here who’re going to get it all cleared out when the time comes.’

‘I could do that for you. You only had to ask.’

‘No, no, it’s all fine. St Leonard’s gets the proceeds, and that’s what I want. I think they’ve done enough for the family to get a few quid out of me.’

‘Was your dad here then?’

‘Yeah, yeah. At the end.’

He replaces his glasses, using his middle finger to push their bridge precisely up to the bridge of his nose.

‘Cancer, you know — they all end up here. I’m lucky they’d have me, kidney patient. But the place was going, so — you know.’

Kelvin sits silent a moment, and I’m sure I detect a choked air from him. I don’t want to look, in case — in case I have to do anything.

‘Well,’ he says with a great sniff and a sigh, ‘whatever you need me to do, just let me know. If there’s anything not taken care of. Getting your effects in order, like.’

I smile at him.

We sit and watch as a maroon work van crawls along the driveway at the required five miles an hour. NRG Electrical painted on the side in yellow. I can hear the pneumatics in its suspension as it creeps over the too-high speed bumps. They are here about the security light, no doubt. I could talk about that with Kelvin, steer clear of tricky subjects. I could tell him about that. But I feel too heavy on the inside.

‘I–I saw Laura yesterday,’ says Kelvin, his voice a little husky.

‘Oh yeah?’ I say, naturally.

‘Yeah. She’s thinking of you. She asked me to send you her love. She’s really concerned, obviously. Concerned that you’re all right.’

‘All right.’

‘She told me she’d been wondering about coming over to make sure you’re settled in. But, you know, she doesn’t want to upset you.’

The van disappears off behind the wall.

I can sense Kelvin fortifying himself.

‘OK, I’m just going to say this. I know it’s not something you want to talk about, but it needs talking about, right?’

‘Go on.’ I know what’s coming.

‘Well, how long is it since she’s been in touch? Five years?’

‘Seven.’

‘Seven years. And it’s pretty obvious why that is, I reckon.’

‘Is it?’

‘Oh, come on, mate.’

‘I want to know. Why does she think she hasn’t been in touch?’

‘Well, I think she’s scared to. I think she thinks that you won’t want to hear from her.’

‘I see.’

‘But the thing is, she really does want to come and see you.’

‘Right.’

‘So — would you be up for that?’

I shrug.

Now he doesn’t know what to do. Kelvin’s never known what to do. I could keep him dangling all day.

You’d be telling me to choose to be nice. Be nice. You’re right, I know. This is not a sport. I should probably give him something to go on. God knows what, though.

‘Why does she want to see me?’

He exhales a quiet little laugh. ‘Because you’re her brother, I imagine, and because you’re in a hospice, and she’s worried — she’s worried she’s going to lose you without—’

‘Without what?’

‘Well, without—’

‘Having eased her conscience?’

‘If you like.’

I laugh. ‘Tell her not to worry about it. Tell her it’s fine.’

Kelvin falls quiet a moment as he thinks through this solution.

‘I–I don’t think that’s going to be enough, mate.’

‘Listen, Kelv, isn’t it enough that I have to forget about everything just to make her feel better? I mean, she hasn’t even got the guts to come here herself, has she? She’s sent you, hasn’t she? Do you think that’s good enough? Do you think I should see her?’

‘I think you should see her, yes.’

‘Look, when it really mattered to me, when she should have chosen to stick by me, she didn’t, did she?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘Her instinct was to stick with Mal. So that’s that. And if she wants to know if that’s fine, then fine, that’s fine. I accept that she did that. You can tell her she doesn’t have to worry about it any more. She did it, and there it is. But don’t pretend she didn’t.’

‘There’s more to it than that, mate.’

‘What more? The last time I saw her was seven years ago, and that was only because it was Mum’s funeral. That’s a lot of time to show there’s more to it than that. Sometimes these things are simple. You don’t need to make it more complicated.’

Kelvin sighs a deep and defeated sigh.

‘It’s just — it’s breaking people up. Even now. It’s breaking Laura up, it’s breaking Mal’s mum and dad up. And yeah, you know, it’s breaking Mal up as well. And you’re the one who can sort all that out. If you can find your way to just talk to her. You know it’s not a normal situation.’

‘It’s not me that made it not normal, Kelv. Ask anyone you like. What he did—’

‘No one’s ignoring what he did. No one. But if you can just talk to her, it would help.’

I do my best to draw in a deep breath.

‘I don’t know why you’re running around after her, Kelv.’

‘I’m not,’ he says.

‘She’ll have you wrapped round her little finger if you’re not careful.’

‘All I’m doing is saying what needs to be said, OK?’

‘Listen,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a problem with you. You know this isn’t easy to talk about.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Totally. But you wouldn’t want me to lie to you, would you? I can tell you this stuff. You know I’m straight with you.’

‘To be honest, mate, I think I’d prefer it if you lied.’

Fuck, fuck. This is bad, this is getting bad.

I can’t. I can’t breathe. I–

I can’t — make my chest go out enough. I can’t breathe in enough.

Chest

Breathe in, chest out. Breathe out, chest in.

Come on, now. Keep it calm, keep it easy.

Chest goes out. Chest goes in.

And now it’s me, conscious, as I breathe.

Out in out in outinoutin …

My pounding heart.

I just want to — just want to heave a sigh.

Is it too much to ask? To heave a great and heavy sigh?

Mini, now. Mini, mini, mini-breaths.

Is it — is it bad enough to—?

To push the button? Call Sheila in?

No visitors, I should have no visitors. All just fucking complication.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that all this shit would stop at some point. You’d think that there would be a point when the fucking past would leave you alone.

I don’t have to forgive anyone anything any more.

This is me.

I can’t believe they thought it would be OK. I can’t believe Kelvin thought it would be fine to swan in here and ask me if I’d meet up with her. What does he know about it? He knows nothing. He’s just trying to get in Laura’s knickers like he always did, and he never will.

They don’t know me at all, do they? They don’t know me at all. I could tell, the way Kelvin was saying it. None of them understand what I’ve been through. Every day I’ve had to live with this. Every day. Ten years. Putting my life back together. Losing Mum, too, dealing with all that on my own. Fucking dialysis three times a week. That’s something, isn’t it, calling a dialysis machine your best friend, old buddy.

No one can just waltz up and suddenly fix all that. And it’s not me they want to fix, is it? It’s not me they care about. It’s themselves.

Creatinine

That’s it — if I’m going to do a real A to Z, then I’ll need to include all the things I’ve got but I don’t even know about. The things I never paid attention to in Biology at school.

That must mean pretty much everything in my entire body.

My body is not my own. I don’t understand it.

I don’t know how the fucking thing works.

When Dr Sood turned round and started talking to me about creatinine levels and dialysis and–

I didn’t know what a dialysis machine was. I mean, I’d collected for a dialysis machine they had an appeal for on some children’s TV show. Probably 1984. I got it into my head that a dialysis machine had flashing lights and numbers, but I think I was mixing up the dialysis machine with the totalizer they had on the show. Every time they reached a new landmark, a whole load of bulbs would light up, and the number would get higher.

My dialysis machine was dreary off-white. Perhaps I was given exactly the one I collected for, thirty years before. It looked like it was made in 1984.

What’s the shelf-life of a dialysis machine? How many different people’s blood had chugged through mine? Now mine was chugging through, and it was cleaning out the creatinine.

I think it was, anyway.

Cleaning out all the bad, the build-ups.

I imagined it like the build-ups of acid in my calves when I’d been running around.

Ahh — ah, my God. There it is.

I nearly made myself cry.

I haven’t cried for–

There are some things that you can’t — they’re unexpected. I haven’t thought about this for years. One of the clearest memories I have of my dad.

Acid cramps in the calves.

That’s it:

Calves

I’m lying, crying on the floor in the lounge of our house, on that horrible old white-and-brown swirly carpet. I’m on my back, and my dad has a hold of my leg, and he’s kneading the calf between his thumbs, and rubbing it gently with his palm.

Up, down, up.

Rub it better, little man. They’re just growing pains.

The agony of it. The worst ache I’d felt to date. And I could not get away from it. It was inside me, and I didn’t know what was causing it.

It’ll pass, don’t worry. It’ll pass.

I never wanted him to let go.

I kept the crying up for as long as I could, but I think he could tell when the pain had subsided. But he didn’t send me away. He patted the sofa beside him, and I hopped up.

Ha; ha; ha.

Fucking hell, this is — this is my heart. Is this my heart? A heart attack? No chest pains.

What if it was?

Push the button?

She should have sided with me, Laura.

Fucking— I was the one she should have supported. Her own brother.

She made her choice.

Trying to have it both ways now.

No.

Fuck, fuck, this is it. Fuck.

Push the button. Where’s the button?

There. Did that push?

Did that click?

There. I set that buzzer off down the hall. I think that’s what I did, with the button. Too late to go back now. Can’t unpush.

How many die of politeness?

C, C, corpse.

Body. My body.

No.

‘Hello, you all right?’

Sheila.

‘I’m — I can’t—’

‘Trouble breathing? OK, wait a minute. I’ll be back in a tick, OK?’

She knows. It was the right thing to do. Push the button. Not making a fuss.

‘Here we go.’ She wheels an oxygen canister before her, and carries a mask. Serious shit. Big deal, big deal. ‘OK, I’m just going to get you to sit up more here. And then we can get you some oxygen.’

‘I’m—’

‘Don’t talk, now. Let’s get you sitting up. Right, now, if you hold this mask. I’m just going to—’

Small olive-skinned hands fumble with knobs on the canister.

‘OK — I think that’s — can you just give me that?’ She takes the mask back off me and looks at it. ‘No, it’s — this is the one that’s been playing up a bit.’ She fumbles more. ‘Sorry — sorry, wait a minute. I’ll go and fetch Jef to give us a hand.’

She walks briskly out, and then comes back to deactivate my buzzer, and then walks briskly out.

No panic, now, no. She’s on the case. Sheila on the case. Trained and able.

Come on, come on.

Your hand in mine, mine in yours. Tight, tight.

Enthusiastic you.

Yeah, you can do it.

I can do it.

Of course you can.

Of course I can.

This is going to happen.

Sheila again, trailed by Jef.

‘—it’s been playing up, and I think it’s to do with the valve at the top. Because it’s not been right since—’

They fuss and meddle with it a bit, alternately taking the mask and trying it at their own noses.

Sheila looks down at me. ‘Sorry about this. How are you doing? Can’t clear your lungs properly?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s all right, I’ll get the other one if we can’t — oh, wait, oh there we go.’

Jef passes me the mask. Triangle of rubbery plastic over my nose and mouth.

‘There now,’ says Sheila. ‘Hold that to your face, OK? Don’t worry, it’ll pass, it’ll pass. I want you to concentrate on getting your breathing down, to slow down, so it’s more comfortable, OK? Breathe normally there, don’t try any great gulps, and just take in the oxygen. It’s going to help you.’

Jef gives me a small smile and leaves.

‘There we go,’ says Sheila. ‘Keep it on your nose and mouth, all right? You need to make sure you’ve got a good bit of oxygen going into your system.’

Through the door, I hear the woman in the next room has started up her groans again.

Uhhhh.

‘Oh, hello,’ says Sheila, ‘Old Faithful’s started up again.’ She smiles at me.

‘I’m, I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Causing all this bother.’

You’re all right,’ she says, thrusting her hands into her tunic pockets, and balancing absently on one foot like a young girl. ‘I’ve got to earn my wages somehow, haven’t I? OK, I’m just going to look in on her now. Keep that mask on until you’re feeling better. I’ve reset your buzzer, but press it again if you want anything, OK? Don’t hesitate. That’s what it’s there for.’

Come on now, baby.

What have you got to say to me?

What would you say?

Think calm. Get yourself into a good state of mind, and it’ll come. Easy.

Easy. Ease.