I’m waiting for Georgiou, the physiotherapist. It’s a smart street, not at all the place you’d expect to find a hostel like this – not because the effects of alcohol and drugs aren’t universal, but because the rents are so high. Maybe it was some kind of bequest. Fact is, the Georgian terrace houses either side and across the road are as fancy as you’d expect for a street off the main drag of a wealthy seaside resort.

A Mercedes Uber pulls up. A man and a woman dressed immaculately in 1920s costumes hurry out of a door opposite and jump laughing into the back of it. If it wasn’t for the modern car with the decal on the side, I’d be worried I was seeing ghosts. I watch the car pull away, and see Georgiou standing on the other side waiting to cross.
‘Did you see that couple?’ I ask him.
‘What couple?’ he says.

I buzz the intercom and the door clicks open. Inside there’s a tiny, security lobby with nothing in it but another door and a perspex grille to the side. A woman frowns at us through the grille. I hold my pass up, she scrutinises it, then clicks us through the inner door. We walk round to the front of the office, which is a counter with another screen. She’s waiting for us with a ledger and a pen. It’s a confusing interaction; she uses code words and acronyms I’ve never heard before, and gets huffy when I ask what it all means.
‘Just sign here,’ she says, jabbing at the ledger with a biro. ‘And take this…’
She hands me a radio and a bunch of keys.
‘Press to talk,’ she says, holding her own radio up.
‘Yep. Got it!’ I say, waving the radio.
‘No. Press to talk,’ she says, then presses the side button on her radio. ‘Testing, testing…Control to R2, receiving…?’
‘Oh! Right!’ I say. Then I press my button and talk back.
‘R2 receiving, loud and clear. Erm…. Over.’
‘You don’t have to say all that,’ she says, clipping her radio back on her belt. ‘Just talk’

Once I’ve filled out the ledger with our details, the woman tells us that Billy, our patient, lives right at the top of the hostel.
‘It’s a long way up,’ she says. ‘Keep going till you can’t go anymore.’
‘Do we need oxygen?’
‘No. It’s not that high.’
I’m aware of her watching us as we go through the first fire door and start walking up.

‘Billy has breathing problems, discharged after a recent exacerbation, lives at the top!’ says Georgiou, striding ahead of me. ‘Makes perfect sense.’
The stairs go on forever, getting narrower and steeper as we go, first floor, second floor, third, up and up and up, past landings of decreasing size, everything warping and tilting like the house is morphing into a giant tree.
‘Where does this guy live – a nest?’ says Georgiou.
And finally we’re there, standing outside Billy’s room, panting. I lean on the balustrade, which wobbles so alarmingly I immediately stand up straight again.
Georgiou knocks.
‘Hello Billy?’ he says, putting his face close to the door. ‘It’s Georgiou, the physio from the community health team, come to see how you are. With Jim, the nursing assistant. Are you up yet?’
There’s a scuffling noise inside. I’m half expecting a giant squirrel to open the door, and actually I’m not far wrong. Billy is a hunched middle-aged guy, his t-shirt riding up over his belly, huge, dilapidated fur slippers on his feet, a tin of Golden Virginia clutched in his paws in lieu of an acorn. If he ever had a tail, he’d long since taken it off and wrapped it around his head for a beard instead. It seems to twitch as he stares at us.
‘What?’ he says.
‘We’ve come for a physio assessment,’ says Georgiou.
‘What kind of assessment?’
‘We want to see how you are on the stairs.’
‘Me?’ he says. ‘Terrible! There! That was easy! I’ve got the cee oh pee dee whatsit, I’m getting over a chest infection, I drink a bottle of rum a day, so all in all you might say I’m running out of options.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘I’m sorry to say it. But what can you do?’
‘I think the first thing would be to get you in a flat nearer the ground.’
‘That’s true. You’re right there. They’re working on that … so they tell me.’
The radio squawks in my hand so violently I almost drop it.
Control to R2! Control to R2! Status update. Over.
I press the button.
‘Yeah. All good, thanks’ I say. Then, as an afterthought: ‘Over’.
Control out.
Billy laughs.
‘You know the best thing about radios, doncha?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The off button. So c’mon then. A stair assessment. Okay. Ready? There’s a fackin’ lot of ‘em. There! Bosh. Done. Thank you very much and goodnight.’