Parkinson’s disease has robbed Alan of facial expression, but from his sparkling eyes I can tell he’s very keen to tell me how he met his wife. Her pictures are everywhere in the flat, a studio portrait of a young woman leaning forwards in a serious, three-quarter pose; shots of her in a wedding dress; cuddling babies; making a speech; holding a hat on her head on the deck of a boat – all with a kind of Doris Day glow, and vastly outnumbering the various other family photos dotted about the place.
‘She died ten years ago,’ he says. ‘I just want to be with her now. Not in a creepy way. It’s just how it is.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘Do you want to know how we met? It’s a funny story. Have you time?’
I tell him I definitely want to hear it, but can he sit down first. ‘Because honestly, Alan – if I hadn’t been standing here with my wicket keeper’s mitts on you would’ve pitched head first into the bookcase. I can fetch whatever you need. Come on! Let me help you to a chair.’
‘Just a sec,now – just a sec,’ he says, turning stiffly on the spot and almost plunging backwards into a pile of records.
‘Whoa! Look – why not have a seat here? I’ll make you a drink and then we can talk about what to do next. And you can tell me how you met your wife.’
He seems to accept this, but instead of heading for the nearest sofa, leads me across the cluttered flat to a dangerously low Ottoman.
‘This’ll do,’ he says, shuffling carefully into position, and then, whilst he’s still miles away, unexpectedly launches himself backwards stiff as a puppet whose strings have been snatched up to throw it back in the trunk. He catches me off guard. I grab the front of his shirt to stop him whacking his head on the wall. The shirt makes an impressive ripping noise.
‘Sorry Alan!’
‘Don’t worry! Don’t worry!’ he says. ‘It’s a cheap old thing. I’ve got hundreds. I’ll just go fetch another…’
He starts trying to get up again. It’s a job to stop him.

* * *

What with one thing and another, Alan needs to go to hospital. Whilst we sit together waiting for the ambulance, he finally gets round to telling me the anecdote about his wife.

‘You wouldn’t think to look at me now, but back then I wasn’t entirely hopeless. I was studying architecture at university. A good friend of mine was doing medicine. C’mon Alan! he said. There’s a party at the local hospital. All the hot nurses will be there. Well I couldn’t say no to that, could I? Turns out it was a big old psychiatric hospital in the suburbs, which put me off a bit, but – well – hot nurses and all that. So we sneaked inside, and there was a long, long corridor, the kind of corridor you see in your dreams, that goes on forever. And coming down this corridor, floating towards us out of the light, were two of the most gorgeous nurses you’d ever seen in your life. One a redhead, the other blond. And we were both so dumbstruck we couldn’t do or say anything, we just sort of stepped helplessly to the side. Except there was fresh wax on the floor under the radiator, and I was wearing my shoes with the shiny soles. So I went flying arse over apex and ended up kicking the blond one in the rear. Two years later we were married. So whenever anyone asks me, How did you meet your wife? I tell them I was in a psychiatric hospital and I kicked one of the nurses.’