There’s an approximate number one with a crooked arrow beneath it, crudely painted in black, nailed to a board beneath the crappy intercom at the front of the house. I guess the Cartwells have a flat round the back, so I head in that direction.

Beside the front door to Flat One is a large electric button, so new it stands out from everything else. In fact, it’s such a contrast – the bright plastic box, the imposing but ramshackle old house – I’m surprised the whole thing didn’t cave in when they screwed it in. But then again, I’m guessing they took the safe option and used glue.

There’s a thick carpet of blue slug pellets scattered in front of the door. Two or three cartons worth. They must have a terrible slug problem. Or maybe they think it’s good for health visitors, too? Pellets crunching underfoot, I reach out, press the button and wait.

Nothing.

I’m not sure it rang anywhere, but sometimes it’s difficult to tell.
I look around. Waggle my feet experimentally on the pellets.
Press the button again.

Nothing.

Is that even a button? Maybe it’s a fancy design feature and the button’s somewhere else. Maybe it’s actually a camera. I lean in to look, and then lean out again, not wanting to scare them. Feel around the box. No – it must be the button. Why would you have a feature on a doorbell that looked like a button but wasn’t? That’d be crazy.
Maybe I just didn’t press hard enough.
I prod a little harder. A couple of times.

Whaaaat? cries a voice from deep inside the house. Why’d’ya keep pressing the fackin’ button? Who ARE you?
‘Oh! Sorry! It’s Jim – from the hospital. Come to see Mr Cartwell…’
I rap on the door with my knuckle and gently push it open.
‘Alright if I come in…?’

There’s a steep flight of stairs leading straight up to a landing. An elderly woman leaning over railings at the top, looking down. She looks insanely hostile – flaring white hair, wide eyes, and a great toothless mouth. She looks down at me with such a rapt expression, I’m worried she’s suddenly going to extend her neck down the stairs and snap me up – head, bags, lanyard and all – in one convulsive gulp. Luckily she stays where she is, gripping the bannisters.
‘Who sent you?’ she says.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you. It was the hospital. When Mr Cartwell was discharged they asked us to come and see how we could help.’
‘Urgh,’ she says (or sounds like). ‘I suppose you’d better come up then.’
She lets go of the bannister and shouts ‘Eric! It’s someone from the hospital to see you.’
A voice from a room somewhere.
‘But I’ve only just got ‘ere.’
‘C’mon. Get up. He’s come to see you he says.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. He’ll tell you.’
‘I was having a kip.’
‘Have it later.’
Inaudible curses.
‘C’mon, then if you’re coming.’

I walk up the stairs, scattering blue pellets behind me like a cat leaving a litter tray.

‘Sorry to be a nuisance,’ I say.
‘Go in the sitting room,’ says Mrs Cartwell. ‘He’ll see you in there.’
‘Okay. Lovely. Thanks.’

The flat is tiny, the narrow layout made worse by all the clutter. There’s just enough room to move from one place to another, and when Mrs Cartwell comes in we have to choreograph each move in advance to make it work.
‘So they obviously didn’t tell you who we were,’ I say, looking for somewhere to dump my bags but giving up.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Who are you?’

We’re interrupted by Mr Cartwell, wheezing and puffing and cursing as he comes down the corridor towards us. His belly is so distended, it reminds me of the spacehopper I used to have, bouncing round the garden, tugging on its ears. It’s such a squeeze for him, moving through the flat, and he fits the width of the corridor so perfectly, it’s hard to resist the idea that he made these walkways himself, just by moving around, and if he’d stayed in hospital a few months longer, the whole place would’ve closed back up again, and that would be that.

Mrs Cartwell waves me to the right, then she moves to the left; I move to where Mrs Cartwell was; Mr Cartwell rolls into the room, eventually easing himself into a decrepit computer chair that creaks and sags alarmingly.
‘What’s all this about?’ he wheezes, flapping the sides of his open dressing gown like wings. And when he turns to look in my direction, he doesn’t open his eyes.