I’ve come to see Vera, but it’s Ken who does all the talking. Getting a direct answer from Vera without being interrupted or guided by her husband is like rowing away from a whirlpool; I know that if I ship the oars and look back at him even momentarily I’ll be lost. So for the moment, at least, I struggle on, throwing out a line for Vera’s version of events.
Not that I think Ken is a bully. It just feels as if their relationship has developed like this over the sixty-odd years they’ve been together, in that tense, unbalanced but still vaguely symbiotic arrangement you sometimes see in nature; Ken the ox, Vera the tickbird riding on his flank.
Their flat is cosy and well-kempt, though. And Ken certainly seems to be on top of medication regimes, appointments and so on. It’s just he can’t avoid dressing everything up in anecdote and performance. He’s even dragged a kitchen chair over so he can sit between us. It creaks alarmingly as he shifts about, coming at each new conversational opportunity from a different angle.
‘Talking of keeping clean,’ he says. ‘I was brought up in an orphanage, down in Kent. Thirty-six boys! You can imagine what that was like! Anyway, there was this matron there, a huge woman she was, massive, like this…’
He places a hoof on each knee, leans forwards and frowns;Vera and I lean back.
‘Terrifying she was! Come bedtime, you’d do anything not to land up in the bathroom she was running. Because she used to clean you with a floor brush, like this…’ (he mimes a ferocious scrubbing) ‘…and whack you on the back of the head with it if you made a fuss.’
‘That sounds terrible!’ I say. ‘Abusive.’
‘Well – it was different in those days,’ he says, relaxing back again. ‘It wasn’t as bad as all that.’
I make a surprised face at Vera; she raises her eyebrows and gives a little shake of her head.
‘I remember once,’ he says, ‘this doctor came to see us all. He told me to take my shirt off, and when he saw the welts on my back and asked me how I got them, I went like this…’ Ken purses his lips and then draws his forefinger and thumb across them from left to right, like he’s zipping up a bag. ‘Because we were all too scared to say anything about it,’ he adds, the zip nowhere near strong enough to hold for more than a second.
‘What did the doctor do about it?’
‘Nothing. Not a sausage. It was the matron, you see? She was a monster. Everyone was terrified of her. I remember once, I was playing ghosts with Kipper…’
‘Kipper?’
‘Surname Fish.’
‘Okay.’
‘And it was Kipper’s turn in the cupboard. And I was just about to go back in the room when I saw Matron coming up the stairs, so of course I hid round the corner. She goes in, and the next thing, I hear this almighty crash, and screams and a dreadful carry-on. And what happened of course was Kipper jumped out the cupboard in front of Matron, and that was that. I never saw him again.’
‘You never saw him again?’
‘Not till breakfast. And he looked sore, I can tell you! But it was fine. I left when I was fourteen and got a job on a farm…’
I look at Vera. She’s got the same expression on her face, not so much acceptance as numb adaptation.
‘What d’you think?’ she says. ‘Will I live?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But keep taking the tablets.’

‘I can’t have much longer,’ says Douglas. ‘Weeks, I expect.’
Despite his hangdog demeanour, Douglas is in the best physical condition of any ninety year old I’ve ever seen. He’s just out of the bathroom, wearing a Kung Fu style bathrobe and suede moccasins, looking as svelte as Hugh Hefner on his way to the pool.
He sits on a cane chair whilst I check him over.
‘I smashed my head on the coffee table,’ he says, touching the dressing on his forehead. ‘The paramedics said I had to go to hospital or I’d die of a brain haemorrhage, but there was no way I was going to A&E, not on a Friday night.’
Neurologically he’s perfectly intact, though, and his observations are all within normal range.
‘Why do you think you fell, Douglas?’
‘Nothing works as it should,’ he says, waggling his feet backwards and forwards in the moccasins, a jaunty old Vaudevillian more than a palliative geriatric. ‘My family all hate me,’ he says, lugubriously, covering up the sudden gape in his robe.
‘I’m sure they don’t.’
‘They do. They can’t wait for me to go.’

Once the examination’s done I leave Douglas to finish changing whilst I go downstairs to chat to his wife, Rene. She’s in her eighties, as immaculate as Douglas, her hair coiffed and banded, her pinafore starched and neatly tied, her hands folded in her lap. But there’s a tension in her face that underlies the perfection of her makeup, like seeing real eyes moving back and forwards in a doll’s face.
‘He’s always been a glass half empty kind of man,’ she says. ‘These last few years are worse, though. He won’t do a thing for himself. Make me a cup of tea he’ll say. But if he makes one for himself he’ll never think of me. He doesn’t cook or clean or do anything to help. Not that he isn’t capable. Half the time he’s walking up and down the garden, if the weather’s nice. Either that or sitting reading one of his big books on World War Two or watching television. I feel mean, talking to you like this, but I don’t know what to do. We went to visit an old work colleague of his the other day. The poor man is dying of cancer,  just a few months to live – you can see it in his face. And do you know what Douglas turned round and said to him? He said I know exactly how you feel. I haven’t got long myself. I mean – what a dreadful thing to say to someone in that situation?  And then to make things worse, he said But at least you’ve got a supportive wife. And I was right there, with them, in the room! When I told the children they were furious, but I wouldn’t let them say anything. I’m just hoping he’ll go into respite somewhere, so I can get away. Because otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do. I could scream with it all, sometimes. I could absolutely scream.’

Mrs Nelson sits on the edge of the bed.
‘What’s happening to me? Can someone please explain?’
She looks over my shoulder, like there’s a crowd of people waiting to speak and not just me.
‘I think you’ve got a urine infection,’ I tell her. ‘That’s why you feel so out of sorts, and it’s probably why you fell yesterday. But it’s perfectly treatable, so don’t worry.’
‘Oh dear! I don’t want to be a bother…’

Truth is, though, the UTI is just the latest episode in a six-month decline.
Mrs Nelson’s next door neighbour, Tom, put me in the picture:

 She hasn’t got any family to speak of, so I’ve been helping out where I can. It’s been fine up till now. I mean, she’s normally pretty independent, going out, doing her own shopping and so on. Now? Oh my Goodness! She’s a different woman. She barely leaves the bedroom, let alone the house. She’s had these falls, you see, and they haven’t helped. And then there’s the phone calls. She’s been on the phone to me day and night, terribly confused and anxious. I don’t mind helping, but there’s a limit to everything and I’m sorry to say I’m almost there. It can’t go on like this. I’ve tried talking to her about the possibility of some residential care, but she won’t hear of it. I mean – all her memories are here, of course. Sixty years is a long time! But one way or another something’s got to give and I’m afraid it’s going to be me. I’m in my seventies, you know! Enough’s enough. She’s just not safe.

I make her some tea and biscuits, and then carry out the examination. She turns out to be physically in good shape, despite the infection, and despite the trauma of the falls. A short course of antibiotics should take care of that side of things, but there are other, more resistant questions to be addressed.
‘What did you used to do for a living before you retired?’ I ask her, taking the blood pressure cuff off her arm and looping the steth round my neck.
‘I managed a bank,’ she says, suddenly seeming much more collected, her hands in her lap, her thumbs moving circles round each other whilst she sights me along her nose. ‘I sorted out people’s money problems.’
‘I bet you did!’
The expression holds for a good while, but unlaces as irresistibly as her hands, so that by the time she’s reaching up to gather the collar of her dressing gown more tightly about her neck, she’s casting round the room again in alarm.
‘What’s happening to me?’ she says.

Anthony is waiting for me at the door of his flat. A desolate, strangely inert figure, he watches my approach with the hollow expression of someone who’d been standing there a hundred years and forgotten why. When I hold out my hand to say hello, I may as well be practising on an empty jacket.
‘Have a seat,’ I tell him. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. I promise I won’t take long.’
‘I see’, he says, but makes no move.
‘Your favourite chair,’ I say. ‘How about that one, over by the window?’
He turns to look.
‘Let me help you.’
I guide him gently by the elbow, and sit him down on a worn armchair with a saggy cushion.
‘There! That’s better! Now – can I get you anything? A cup of tea…?’
It all feels slightly odd, as if I’m the one who lives here and he’s the visitor.
‘Coffee,’ he says. ‘Black. No sugar.’
‘Okay! Shan’t be a moment.’
When I walk over to the kitchen area he gets up and follows me, then stands watching as I fill the kettle and get the coffee things together.
‘I love all your pictures,’ I tell him.
I’ve never seen so many. All four walls of the sitting room are covered with framed photos of all sizes, mostly cats and dogs, but a few family portraits, too. There’s one prominent picture – a man in a naval officer’s uniform, standing at the wheel of a ship.
‘Is that you?’ I ask him.
‘Everyone says that.’
‘Is it, though?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wow. Were you in the navy?’ I stir the coffee and gesture for us to go back to the chair.
‘I was on a cruise,’ he says, with surprising fluency. ‘You could pay ten pounds and have your photo taken dressed up at the wheel.’
He goes back to the chair. When he sits down, he rests his hands right and left, puts his feet just so, and his head in neutral alignment.
‘There!’ I say, drawing up a carved elephant stool and placing the coffee cup within reach.
Just behind him is another framed picture – this one an old playbill – John Gielgud’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest, Globe Theatre, London.
‘That would’ve been something,’ I tell him, taking out my obs kit. ‘What a cast! Jack Hawkins, Margaret Rutherford. Edith Evans…. A handbag?’
‘Look at the date,’ he says, turning his head slowly, his chin parallel with the parquet floor. ‘I bought it because of the date.’
I lean in to look a little more closely. October 10^th, 1939.
‘Oh! The war! Was that the date war was declared?’
‘No,’ he says, turning to the front again. ‘September 3^rd. But it’s near enough.’

Greta is on the floor again.
‘She didn’t fall, though, Jim, thank God. Her legs just went from beneath her, do you understan’ me? – they gave out on hah, when we were walking together to the bathroom. Lucky for me we were right by the bed, so we had somewhere to sit down quick. Poor Greta was on my lap for about ten minutes –weren’t you, Greta? Hey? At least it’s a nice big lap for you! – but we were stuck, y’ah? And I knew I had to get help. So in the end I did not have any choice. I had to slide her down onto the floor, down my legs, like this… so there was no great drama there. Then I made her comfortable – as you can see – and called for an ambu-lens. And that’s who I thought you were when you knocked on the door.’

I met Thandolwethu yesterday.
‘Please – call me Thandie’ she said. ‘It will save a lot of time and confusion and heartache.’
She’s been Greta’s live-in carer, alternating with a colleague, for the past six months. Over that time Greta’s condition has deteriorated. Her health problems and extreme old age have reached a point where it’s inevitable she’ll have to go into residential care; for now, though, the family have been doing their best to keep her at home. There’s every bit of equipment you could wish for, including a hospital bed, and health care professionals of one sort or another coming in regularly to check on pressure areas, medication, dressings and what have you. And then there’s Thandie, of course, keeping watch, keeping Greta afloat.
Of everything that Greta has, Thandie is far and away the most valuable. She’d be worth the money just for the way she dresses: in a voluminous Kaftan embroidered with circles of scarlet, green and gold; her riotously knotted hair piled up and kept in place by a banana yellow headscarf; her lipstick a shiny coral red, which, along with her deep bass voice and rich accent, invests everything she says with huge dramatic import. Even the most banal thing – like ‘Shall I fix you some of that bea-ootiful porridge now?’ sounds more like an invitation to a banquet than the offer of a bowl of microwavable oats. It’s surprising such a small flat can hold a personality as big as Thandie’s. She needs a hall, a stage, a theatre. For now, though, she plays to this one-roomed flat, filling the place with vitality and light; at night, the walls must glow.

I kneel down and check Greta over.
Thandie’s right – she hasn’t injured herself, and she doesn’t appear to have suffered a stroke or any other acute episode, so the only thing left to do is get her up. I know the ambulance service is under pressure, and may well struggle to send a vehicle out to us anytime soon. With Thandie’s help I put Great back on her feet, and once she’s found her balance, we lead her back to the chair.
‘There! Isn’t that better?’ says Thandie, holding Greta’s face in her hands and planting a kiss on her forehead. ‘The queen is on her throne again, and all is right with the world.’
Then Thandie turns to me.
‘That was a bit of luck, you coming to visit when you did.’
‘It was!’
‘Y’know – I would give you a kiss too, but I’m not sure about it. Maybe we should jes’ shake hands! And Jim – if ever you’re passing by this way again, and you need a cup of tea, do not hesitate! Just ring my number, and let me know, and I will have one standing by…’

The label under the doorbell says Rogers, but should more accurately read: Press Here to Summon Hell Hounds.
I’ve never in my life heard such a cacophony of howls and snarls and shrieks and growls. It’s completely terrifying. And I like dogs.
‘Just a minute’ says a voice deep within the house, followed by a series of muted crashes and curses, culminating in one last, indignant yelp as a door is slammed shut. A large, slow figure lumbers into view beyond the frosted glass. I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone dressed like a bomb-disposal expert; instead, I’m greeted by an elderly man in shirt and braces, pleasantly smiling, with the insouciant glow of a man called in from the potting shed.
‘Don’t mind them,’ he says, gently swiping back into place the one strand of silver hair that had come adrift. ‘They’re all mouth and no trousers.’
He leads me through the house to the little back bedroom, by-passing the sitting room door. The dogs on the other side press their noses to the gap at the bottom sniffing so emphatically it’s actually hard to make progress in the other direction.
‘What breed are they?’ I ask him.
‘A Bichon Frise and five Chihuahuas,’ he says.
‘Wow! Sounds like more!’
‘I’m glad it’s not.’
He leads me through to his wife, who – incredibly – is still asleep in bed.
‘Margaret? Margaret!’  he says.

*

Margaret submits to my examination with a passivity born of exhaustion. She’s had enough – the illness, the attention, the disruption her illness has brought. We chat about dogs and she perks up.
‘I don’t mind if you let them through,’ I tell her.
‘They’re a bit of a pain,’ she says.
‘I’ll be alright.’
‘If you’re sure’
‘Absolutely.’
She shouts for her husband, there’s a brief pause, and then six dogs race into the bedroom.

I’ve never known a pack operate with such precision. They’re a crack unit, a crazy band of volunteers living on the edge with nothing to lose. The Chihuahuas do all the running; the Bichon hangs back. A grizzled veteran with the outraged expression of a Five Star General whose just swallowed his last cigar, he directs operations while the Chihuahuas fly around me. They throw themselves head first into my rucksack, run off with my steth, sniff my trousers, lick my face, jump on my lap, circle my chair, round and round and round. Watch your flank! the Bichon says, sitting next to Mrs Rogers, paddling his cute little paws up and down. He’s on to you! Pull out, man! Pull out! The Chihuahuas become even more frantic. Their ears are so fluffy, I could be in the middle of a flock of exotic birds, except now and again I find myself interrogated nose to nose by a pair of raisin eyes.
‘Suki! Put him down!’ snaps Mrs Rogers. ‘Sorry! But you did say to let them through…’

Hurrying into the outpatients department to drop off some samples for the path lab, I notice a guy sitting in the waiting room who is the very spit of a guy I used to work with in the ambulance service. I can’t help but do a double-take – as he does, too.
‘Malcolm?’ I say – instantly realising it’s not. (Like a celebrity look-a-like, or a waxwork dummy in Madame Tussauds – he shares just enough of the salient features to be recognisable, but lacks that essential Malcolmness).
As soon as I’ve finished speaking, though, the guy says: ‘Phil?’
‘No, I’m Jim’ I say, blushing. ‘Sorry. I thought you were someone else.’
‘Me too! It’s incredible how like Phil you are.’
He nudges the woman he’s with.
‘Doesn’t he look like Phil?’ he says.
She barely glances up.
‘Maybe. A little,’ she shrugs, going back to her Kindle.
‘Well!’
‘Who’d have thought?’
‘So.’
For want of anything else, I hold up the samples I’ve got in my hand.
‘Just dropping these off,’ I say.
He smiles and nods, as if that’s exactly the sort of thing Phil would do.
I drop them in at reception, then turn to go. To be honest, if there was an alternative route out I would have taken it, although why it should be so embarrassing I’ve no idea.
‘So – all the best!’ I say to him as I pass. ‘Nice to meet you!’
‘You too! Phil! Have a nice day!’
We both wave at each other.
I leave, trying to act nonchalant, but horribly aware of everyone in the waiting room turning to watch me go (everyone apart from the woman on the Kindle, that is).

A busy, bruising day. But the good news is: I’m safely back in the office, with just enough time to follow-up on a couple of calls and sort the paperwork out. It’s all looking great for a smart getaway – until Michaela calls me over. She has a last minute job.
‘Do you have capacity to deliver a commode to Mrs Albertson? Then you can go home! Okay, Jim? Okay!’
My mind flies up for a panicked, drone’s eye view of the mission, the time it will take to retrieve a commode from stores, travel to the address avoiding all the pinch-points, deliver the thing, then make it back through town to head home.
‘Okay,’ I tell her. ‘Fine.’
I take the details and run, putting on my coat as I trot-walk out of the office.

Once I’ve loaded up the commode I drive like a  Toyota Yaris-shaped bat out of hell – smoking wings, smouldering tail, echo-sounding for gaps.

Ten minutes later I pull up outside the Albertson’s address, a block of flats set back from the road down an endless flight of concrete steps that descend and rise and descend again like something out of an infernal drawing by Escher.

‘Lift’s out,’ says a grim-faced guy lugging two garbage bags.
‘Oh great! They’re on the fifth floor!’
‘At least you’ll have something to sit on when you get there, mate.’
He holds the door open for me. I curse and clatter up a million stairs to the Albertson’s apartment.

It’s probably a good thing it takes a while for someone to come to the door, because it gives me time to catch my breath. Eventually it opens, and I’m greeted by an elderly man whose long silver hair sticks straight out behind him like he’d showered and then dried off in a wind tunnel.
‘Come in! Come in!’ says Mr Albertson, but, of course, it’s not as easy as that. Their apartment is tiny, cluttered from floor to ceiling with stuff, and Mr Albertson – trying to be helpful – only succeeds in anticipating my moves and putting himself exactly there, so that in the end I have to think three or four steps ahead and manipulate the man as much as the commode. Finally we make it through to the bedroom where Mrs Albertson is lying in bed. If Mr Albertson hadn’t been in the way the whole time I’d think he’d gone on ahead, jumped under the quilt and played out his hair on the pillow.
‘Well!’ says Mrs Albertson. ‘That does look useful.’
I’ve no clue where to put it, though. The room is as cluttered as the rest of the apartment.
I look at Mr Albertson, who has taken a seat on a chair at the foot of the bed. I guess that’s where he’s been sitting the last few nights, keeping his wife company, reading to her. It’s a shame to disrupt such a cosy arrangement. But the whole point of the commode is to stop his wife from having another fall when she struggles to get to the bathroom at night, so there’s no other option but to replace the chair with the commode.
‘No matter,’ he says. ‘I can sit on the commode instead, and when she needs it, we’ll swap!’
I feel bad about rushing the job. They ‘re a nice couple and I’d like to spend more time. But I’m driven by the tick-tock-ticking of the internal metronome I set in motion a half hour ago, and I can’t seem to do anything other than say goodbye and hurry down the stairs. Back in the car I call the office to say I’m done, turn off the phone and toss it in the dashboard along with my ID badge and pen, all in one movement, then turn the engine over and spin the car round.

The route back across town is strangely free of traffic.
I’m exhausted.
I start to ease up.
It’s a clear night, and the city wheels around me in wonderful detail and colour. If it was true that half an hour ago I was moving like a bat out of hell, well, the little bat has run himself out now, passed into another realm, tucked in his wings and dropped through the eyepiece of a kaleidoscope.
Did the city always look this amazing?
I put the radio on.
Well sometimes I go out by myself, and I look across the water…
‘Yeah!’
I turn it up, sing out.
Valerieee…eeee
Perfect timing.

‘You can catch all kinds of things from an animal,’ says Alan. ‘Cats. Dogs. You name it. They’ve all of them got something, some sort of disease. I’ve had them all, of course. Not the disease, I mean the animal. I used to race pigeons. I spent a lot of time with pigeons, one way or another.’
‘Talking about pigeons. I saw this story the other day about this guy who was renovating an old house. And when he started taking the chimney down to put up a new one, he found the skeleton of a First World War messenger pigeon stuck up there.’
‘How’d they know it was from the First World War?’
‘I don’t know. It had a little hat and goggles. Anyway, the thing was, there was this message round its leg, in a little brass cylinder, but no-one could read it, because you had to have the codebook the other end.’
‘Incredible birds, pigeons. Do you know how much prize money I got from my champion bird, Megan?’
‘How much?’
‘A thousand pound. That was a lot of money in them days.’
‘It’s a lot of money now.’
‘Poor thing,’ he says. ‘Probably got lost in a storm or something.’
He adjusts his nasal specs, the clear plastic tubing passing in loops and coils from the oxygen cylinder in the corner of the room, up over his lap, to curve backwards round his ears, over the front of his face, terminating in two tiny vents under each nostril.
‘It doesn’t half make your ears sore,’ he says.
‘Maybe you could put some padding there, to stop it rubbing.’
‘Anything rubs if you wear it long enough.’
‘Just hold still whilst I take a reading…’
I’ve wired Alan up to the ECG. He sits on the edge of the bed in a neutral pose, his hands palm up on his legs, cables running from his chest and his limbs.
‘There! All done! You can relax.’
‘It’s all so frustrating. I used to be so active. I played football for years. Swimming in the sea. I smoked, of course, but everybody did. You didn’t think about it. I’m surprised they didn’t give the kids a pack of cigarettes with their bottle of milk at break-time.’
‘They were pretty relaxed about the whole thing.’
‘Even doctors used to smoke.’
‘Still do.’
‘Not during an examination.’
‘Well – it’s a stressful job. You only need look at the news.  Right. I’ll drop this off at the surgery and the doctor’ll be in touch.’
‘You think?’
‘Hopefully.’
‘Marvellous.’
He tears off the ECG dots, sticks them all together in a clump, hands them to me, then buttons up the front of his shirt.
‘It all happened so fast,’ he says. ‘One minute I was okay, or sort of, and the next I was flat on my face at the Bowls club. I said to them, I said Can you just take me home? but Janice was there, and she used to be a nurse, and she said Alan, we can’t just take you home because your lips are fifteen shades of blue. So now here I am, the Prisoner of Zenda. Or thereabouts. If Zenda was the name of some fancy new disease.’

Amongst all the pictures on the wall there’s one of Angela as a young woman, standing on a bright quayside, squinting into the camera, wearing a heavy rubber two-piece SCUBA diving suit with the corrugated breathing tube draped over her shoulder and temporarily pushed into a gap at the front.
‘I was about thirty,’ she wheezes. ‘Look how the mighty fall.’
‘Did you do a lot of diving?’
‘A fair bit, me and Connor. He had a contract for the port authority, supervising the divers working on the footings. One time he was sick so he got me to pilot the boat, never mind about the certification. Well – we’d have lost the contract. But you should’ve seen me! In my tight white shorts and white top, bouncing up and down, soaked in spray. I only had to fish one body out…’
‘What d’you mean, one body?’
She shakes her head and holds the flat of her hand up, suddenly unable to talk.
Anxiety makes Angela’s breathing worse. When she’s talking about something she feels comfortable with, her chest eases and she perks up. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a topic that doesn’t inevitably stray into darker areas.
‘Have you always lived down here?’ I ask her, sitting back down and finishing my notes.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe Blackpool?’
‘And you’d be right!’
‘Only ‘cos a friend of mine’s from there and you sound just like him. Only not such a deep voice.’
‘That’s my real home. This? This is just the place I ended up.’
‘Did you work in Blackpool?’
‘’Course I did! I had a good job, in a cigarette factory. I loved that job! I was a scientist – working in the laboratory, quality control, you know? Part of my job was to go down on to the factory floor to fetch the readings every week. Well – the guys there, they were a right old tease. They’d shout out Quick, here she comes! and then they’d all line up, and I’d have to walk past and give ‘em all a kiss.’
‘No!’
‘Aye! They were a rotten lot! Every single one of them wanted a kiss. Hands everywhere. And that’s what I got every single Friday. But I was young and I didn’t know any better.’
‘Blimey! At least you wouldn’t have to put up with that these days.’
‘Oh I don’t know…’
She starts breathing fast again, fiddling with the silver locket round her neck.
‘’Course, being the fool I was I got married and Frank put a stop to all that. He put a stop to a lot of things, did Frank. He didn’t like me going out. Oh, he was an evil man. I had a terrible life. He’d beat me, lock me up, kick me. My friends said I had to runaway or one morning I’d wake up dead, and I knew they were right. For the kids’ sake I had to go. But that weren’t the end of it. He stalked me, for years. I moved house a couple of times but he always managed to find out where I’d gone and a month or two later he’d be there, shouting and screaming in the street, carrying on. Deliberately running his car into mine, making horrible phone calls. Then one night he broke in and started smashing the place up. All my lovely things. The police came and arrested him, and even though they cuffed his hands and his feet he still managed to put one of them in the hospital. The police said I had to go somewhere completely different or I’d never have any peace, which is why I came down here, hard though it was. But they were right. I didn’t hear anything else and I started to build a life for me and the kids. And then a few years later I got a call from the police. Good news they said. Frank’s new wife came downstairs and found him dead. And d’you know what I did? It might sound a bit wrong, but what I did was, I went straight over the corner shop – because by that time I was good friends with Eileen, the woman who runs it – and I said Eileen, Frank’s dead. Right she said. Come here. And she took me out the back, opened a bottle of champagne, poured two glasses, give me one and she said Here’s to Frank, may he rot in hell!’
Angela’s shoulders heave with the memory of it all.
‘Don’t worry about talking anymore,’ I tell her. ‘Just try to slow your breathing. Remember what we said? That’s it. Good. In through the nose, out through the mouth…’
She holds her hand up again. After a while, when she’s more or less back in control again, she says:
‘And that – was the end – of that.’