Outside John’s window are two enormous flowering yucca plants, bees bimbling drunkenly up and down the spikes.
‘Look at that lot,’ he says. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘Pretty impressive.’
‘And they’re socially distanced, n’all. I was going to put a mask on ‘em, but I thought the bees would get annoyed.’
‘That’s a good one! I like that!’
‘Yeah!’ he says, ‘This bungalow, it’s the best plot in the street. It’s got the garden. It’s got somewhere to park the car. ‘Course, the garden was really Annie’s area of expertise. But she’s gone now and I’m not so good as I was on my pins. Still – can’t complain. Honestly, if I was a millionaire I couldn’t be any better set up. I’ve got everything to hand, look. The kitchen, the bathroom, the bed. I’ve got a TV. I’ve got my iPad for doing the email and putting a few quid on the horses. I’ve got friends next door who do my shopping and run the hoover over. I’ve got family who pop in when they can. So you tell me. What better life could a millionaire have than what I’ve got?’
‘I can’t think, John. It seems pretty great.’

And it’s true. It is.

John is ninety-two, but he’s been lucky with his health – that, and the fact he played a lot of sport and stayed active all his life. He never smoked, he says, and only drinks on special occasions, which is ‘any day with a D in it.’

He sits upright on the armchair, his gnarled hands restlessly moving, from a stroking kind of action on the ends of the arm rests, to a vigorous rubbing of his bulbous nose, to a dog-like scratching of his ear, then back to the arm rests. It’s like watching an old but well-maintained tractor, idling in the yard before rattling off down the lane.

But his demeanour suddenly changes when he tells me what happened with Annie.

‘Wa’aall,’ he says, batting the air. ‘They messed up the appointments and whatnot. There was a lot of toing and froing. Me ringing the surgery asking whether the blood results was back yet; the surgery saying ‘what blood results?’ and this and that. You get the picture. Till finally when they found out what she had it was too late. She got took by the cancer. It wasn’t easy. And then there was this in-quiry, see? But I tell you what – I was prepared. I had all the dates written down, all the lost appointments, all the tests they missed. And I sat up in that room in the hospital, with the consultant and all the rest of them sitting opposite me. And the consultant he said she would’ve died anyway. So I got a bit hot, I can tell you. And the woman from the wherever-she-was-from, she said I had to show a little respect. So I said where was the respect you showed my Annie? Where was the respect there? ‘Course, they went quiet at that.’

He shrugs, strokes the arms of the chair.

‘It’s all in the past now,’ he says. ‘I got a letter saying sorry, so there’s that.’

He looks out of the window, at the bright sunshine pouring down into the garden, the hedges looking a little ragged now, the shed leaning to the right.

‘What about them yuccas, though?’ he says. ‘Socially distanced! Hey?’