Magda bangs the horn with the heel of her hand, the force of it pushing her back into the seat.
‘Fucking hell! Would it kill you to indicate? How we supposed to know what you going to do at roundabout? What do you think I am? Fucking mind-reader?’
She drives on.
‘My father used to be traffic cop. He made it big thing to learn. He say to me “It doesn’t matter if it’s one, two, three o’clock in morning and no-one on road for miles. You make manoeuvre, you indicate. Because this way it becomes automatic habit, and you do it whenever you drive, without thinking.’
She’s forced to give way to an oncoming car.
‘Jesus fucking bastard! Sorry – I know is bad to swear. But please! Where these people learn to drive? Fucking CLOWN school?’

* * *

One of our carers has gone sick, so I’ve been asked to help Magda out with a double-up call. It’s to Rita, a very elderly and frail woman who has deteriorated significantly in the last few days. The regular care company don’t have capacity to pick up the increased calls yet, so we’ve stepped in to bridge the gap.
‘Rita is lovely woman,’ says Magda, pushing her enormous sunglasses up into her bleach blonde hair. ‘But then you see, I only do lovely womans.’
She jabs at the keysafe with one hand and retrieves the keys without even seem to look, everything so slickly done it’s like watching a stage magician.
‘Rita has lovely cat,’ she says, opening the door. ‘But she is grumpy in morning, like you. Helllloooooo? Rita? It’s the carers, darling. Good morning. We’re coming up there…’

I follow her up the stairs into a large, dimly lit sitting room with a hospital bed at one end. Rita is lying in the bed, surrounded by cushions and bolsters, the mattress raised in the middle to crook her legs up. She turns her head to the side to smile at us, the skin beneath her chin spare and slack, her whole body giving the impression of a generalised falling away, as if life was a tidal force leaving her now, declining with the last phase of the moon.

Almost immediately there’s an imperious yowling sound, and an enormous black cat stomps into the room behind us. The cat is wearing an expression so furious you could simply draw an X with a marker pen and be done. She advances into the middle of the carpet, sits on her haunches with an audible plump, licks her lips once, and waits.

‘Here is cat!’ says Magda, to avoid any confusion. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot already. What is cat called?’ she says to Rita, who manages to say without any interruption to her smile that the cat is called Juniper.
‘Juniper? Huh. I thought was Jupiter. Juniper? Like berry? Is this what you call it, berry?’
I nod.
‘They use it to make gin,’ I say. ‘I think that’s where the name comes from.’
‘Juniper?’
‘I think gin is short for ginevere or something. Dutch maybe. Which means juniper.’
‘Huh.’
She turns to Rita.
‘You like gin, Rita? Is that why you name your cat Juniper? Maybe you have other cat called vodka?’
Rita closes her eyes and shakes her head imperceptibly.
‘No worry,’ says Magda. ‘Let us sort you out, darling…’

* * *

After Rita is freshened up, the sheets changed and everything taken care of, Magda plays with the cat whilst I write up the notes. Magda knows where Juniper’s toys are kept; straightaway she fetches a small plastic fishing rod with a crinkly bee on the end of a string and dandles it in the air above Juniper’s head. Juniper swats at it – a little half-heartedly, it seems to me, flashing me looks now and again as if to say: Look – I’ve just got to attend to this damned bee business and I’ll be with you directly.
‘What is matter with you today, cat?’ says Magda. ‘Is my friend here distracting you? Is that what it is? Hmm?’ She gives up, tosses the rod on the sofa, and subjects Juniper to one more colossal stroke of the head and neck – so vigorously that as a matter of survival, Juniper has to stand and brace herself with her front paws, raising her tail straight up in the air to deflect the energy into the ceiling.
Magda picks up her bag to go.
‘I love this funny cat, Rita,’ she says. ‘We have cat back home, Puszek. But he is farm cat. Like baby tiger, you know? Puszek is so big now he drive the tractor.’
Rita bats a skeletal hand in the air.
‘Okay, darling,’ says Magda, taking Rita’s hand and squeezing it. ‘You take care now. We see you later. Okay? Okay. And don’t worry. We put key back in key safe.’
Juniper jumps up onto the bed, and immediately begins paddling on the duvet with its paws.
‘Good girl,’ says Magda. ‘That’s it!’

* * *

On the way back to base we stop off for a coffee and something to eat. We take five minutes to drink it in the car before setting off again.
‘How old are you?’ she says, giving me a sideways look, twisting the lid off her cup and blowing across the top of it.
‘Fifty-six.’
‘Fifty-six? Jesus Christ! You could be my father!’
I shrug.
‘You don’t look fifty-six,’ she says, biting the end off a croissant and chewing vigorously. ‘What you do before this job?’
‘Well – I was ten years in the ambulance. Before that I was teaching English in a secondary school for a couple of years. Before that I was temping. Different companies, some for a couple of years. I worked for a publishing house in London. A warehouse, office jobs, a couple of bars. I went to university, did English and Drama there.’ I shrug, helplessly. ‘That kind of thing. You know?’
I want to tell her I tried acting for a while, but I imagine it would just add to the generally dispiriting account of my career to date, so I leave it out and sip my coffee instead.
‘You travel?’ she says.
‘No. Not really. I wanted to.’
‘No travel? What about drugs? You do drugs?’
‘Some. Not much.’
‘Hmm,’ she says, finishing the croissant, smacking her hands clean and turning the engine over.
‘You’re telling me, not much. Come, now. Done. Let’s go.’