‘Do you want a cup of tea? I can run down and make you one.’
‘I can’t expect you to wait on me hand and foot… oh, all right then. White, none, please! That’s very kind.’
‘Well we can’t have our nurses going dry, can we?’
Deidre hurries off down the stairs.
I turn back to her mum, Frances, who’s sitting patiently on the side of the bed.
‘What do you want to do first?’ she says.

Frances broke her wrist the other day. It’s back-slabbed now, waiting for the swelling to go down and a fracture clinic appointment in a couple of days. Till then she’s stymied, unable to dress, shower, wash up, feed herself. Not that those things were happening much lately, anyway. Frances’ dementia has been getting worse, her benign confusion sliding into a more profound and dangerous lack of self-awareness. Despite three carers a day, it was already looking like she’d have to move somewhere safer. Deidre has already told me she’s actively looking for a care home.
‘There you go!’ says Deidre, bustling back in the room and holding out a strong cup of tea in a mug with a kitten on the side. ‘Nice n’strong to keep you awake.’

She watches as I run through the examination.

‘You’re my best patient today,’ I tell Frances as I unclip my stethoscope. ‘Mind you, I’ve only just started, so…’
‘Cheeky!’ says Deidre. ‘Don’t listen to him, mum.’
‘Where’s my tea?’ says Frances.
‘There, on the side. No – your good side.’
‘Oh. Right you are.’
‘We used to have a kitten like this,’ I say to Deidre, taking a sip of tea and then holding up the mug. ‘Whenever it had that expression on its face, you knew it was planning something spectacular, like sprinting across the room, running up the curtains and swinging from the pelmet.’
‘Where d’you get him from, then? The circus?’
‘Nah. The RSPCA.’
‘I like cats. They’re all a bit crazy.’
‘Who are?’ says Frances.
‘Cats, mum.’
‘Oh. I thought you meant me.’
And she raises up the arm with the cast, like it was the craziest thing of all.

Mary hasn’t made it to the intercom yet, but whilst I’m waiting a guy on the ground floor comes out. I think my uniform, badge and equipment probably reassure him I’m bona fide, but just as a little extra I tell him I’m here to visit flat twenty-one.
‘Good luck!’ he says, holding the door open and slapping me on the shoulder as I pass.

She’s waiting for me in the dark cave of her hallway, hunched over and scowling like an ancient, denuded bear, furious to be found still in her nightie.
‘I haven’t had my peach yet,’ she snaps, turning and shuffling back into the bedroom.
It’s quite a contrast to the hallway, a wide, bay window overlooking the local park, bright morning sunshine filtering through trees, joggers in fluorescent tops running round the perimeter, a collie dog leaping for a frisbee.
‘Great view!’ I say, putting my bag down.
‘ Great view? What good’s a view to me?’ she says. ‘How’s a bit of green supposed to help? I’m sick. My back’s killing me, my eyes are falling out. I’ve got no appetite. I suppose you think I’m rich? This isn’t my flat, you know. It’s council. Or housing association. Same thing. Just ‘cos you can see a few trees out the window doesn’t mean I’ve got money to burn.’
‘No. I’m sorry you’re not feeling so good today, Mary.’
‘You don’t know the half of it. But what do you care? That doctor was here last night. I’d just started telling him how I was and suddenly he says: That’s it! That’s your eight minutes. I’m off. And anyway, where do they get off telling you not to eat and smoke when they’re the worst of the lot?  You see ‘em all out there, stuffing themselves with crisps and fags. Nothing surprises me anymore, though. No-one cares. I went up the hospital for that MRI the other day. The ambulance what took me might as well have been loading a wardrobe. They slung me in the back and then rode me all round the houses. I could hardly keep myself in the chair, my bits and pieces flying everywhere. Ooh you do look ill says the nurse when I got there. Is it any wonder after a shocking ride like that? I said. But she didn’t want to know. And then I was hours waiting before they picked me up again. The journey back was even worse. I said to them: Are you trying to kill me or what? But they didn’t say nothing, just smiled at each other like it was some kind of joke. Then they tipped me out and went down the pub. They looked like drinkers. I know the signs. My dad was the same. My poor old mum didn’t have two halfpennies to rub together but he always managed to find enough to spend every night down the boozer.’
She pulls on her dressing gown, tightens the cord and frowns at me.
‘And watch out when he came home,’ she says.

‘D’you know, the last medical I had was in ninety-forty nine, when I was called up for National Service. I remember the doctor there. A quiet individual. Very cold hands. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the sergeant major jumps up and shouts Drop ‘em! so of course that’s what I did. He fumbled around like they do and then jabbed me in the bottom with a needle. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He turned round to get something off the table and I thought he’d finished so I pulled my trousers up. But the needle was still there and I pushed it further in. I screamed and flew headfirst out of the door. When I came back in and handed the needle over, I didn’t get an apology. In fact, the sergeant major said it was a good thing I came back because otherwise he was going to put me on a charge for stealing government property. And that was my introduction to the army.’

The garages are gone at the end of the terrace. In their place is a chrome and glass building, appearing almost overnight, one flat on top of another at a playful angle, brushed steel numbers on heavy front doors. It looks out of place, a lifestyle machine, or an explorer from another part of the galaxy sent to gather information and start the re-colonisation process.
The Drumlins’ house is five doors up from it. They moved here after they were married seventy years ago, and like them, the house is starting to feel the weight of all that time, the paint lifting in rumpled strips from the windowsills, weeds growing up through blown plaster and concrete, a settling air of neglect about the place.
It’s almost twelve. My last call of the morning.
I’ve rung the bell a few times but heard nothing. There’s a key safe on the inside of the garden wall, but I haven’t been given a number. Just as I get out my phone to call the office and see if they have it, I hear shuffling from behind the door, a rattle of chains, mumbling.
Celia opens the door.
‘Hello. My name’s Jim, from the hospital avoidance service. Come to see Derek.’
Celia has an engagingly lop-sided smile, her hair so fixed and fine and white it could be made from spun coconut.
‘He’s downstairs in the living room,’ she says. ‘We haven’t even had our cornflakes!’
‘Sorry to disturb you.’
She turns and leads me through the house. It’s dark inside, the only light filtering in through the jungle of the back garden, the whole place so narrow and gloomy and closed-in it’s like I’m being led by an ancient mouse through her nest in the trunk of a tree.
Derek is planted in his favourite chair. He gives me a furious stare as I announce myself and go over to shake his hand.
‘I won’t be long,’ I tell him.
‘We haven’t h-h-h-h-ad our c-c-c-c-c-cornflakes yet,’ he says, at high volume.
‘He has trouble with his words,’ says Celia, dropping into the opposite chair. ‘Ever since the war.’
Derek tuts and flaps a hand across the front of his face.

I chat to them whilst I read the notes and unpack my bag.

‘Oh – we’re the only ones left here now,’ she says. ‘I don’t recognise anyone. D’you know who I used to work for?’
‘Who?’
‘The Borough Surveyor!’
She plants her hands flat in her lap and laughs, as if she’d said something outrageous, like Winston Churchill or Bing Crosby.
‘Was that at the Town Hall?’
‘The Town Hall? No. It was…. where was it?’
She leans forward and looks right and left, like she’d put it down by her feet.
‘That building. Down there on the front. Come on, Derek. You know…’
He tuts again.
‘Anyway – it’s gone now!’
‘Do you mean demolished? Or you can’t remember?’
She leans back and smiles at me happily.
‘The Borough Surveyor!’ she says again.
‘Sounds like a nice job.’
‘It was a nice job.’
‘What kinds of things did he survey? Or she. The Borough Surveyor?’
‘Oh. You know. Things.’
‘Sounds lovely.’
She stares at me.
‘Did you used to work there?’ she says.
‘Me? No. I wish.’
She chuckles, picks a thread from her skirt.
‘We haven’t even had our cornflakes!’ she says, waggling her fingers and dropping it off to the side.
‘Who d-d-d-d-did you s-s-s-say you w-w-w-ere?’ says Derek.

And now – LUNCH! says the next PowerPoint slide.
I’m too stunned for a moment to react. I rub my face, worried I may actually have fallen asleep and been talking. But if I did everyone’s too kind or busy to care. They’re hurriedly finding money, checking phones, pressing forwards for the exit in a rush that’s only two steers short of a stampede.
By the time I reach the little volunteers’ café in the foyer, it’s been trampled flat, stripped of everything but a ham and pickle baguette, sobbing quietly to itself at the back of the cabinet.  I take it out and put it on the counter.
‘…and a cup of tea, please.’
‘Lovely,’ says the elderly woman behind the counter. ‘Are you eating in?’
‘Actually I think I’ll go and sit outside.’
‘Outside?’
‘Yep. I need a bit of sun.’
‘Do you want a plate with your food?’
‘No, thanks. I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ she says. ‘I’ll get you a paper plate anyway. And I’ll tell you why in a minute.’
She ducks down behind the counter and starts rootling around. Eventually she stands up again and hands me a paper plate.
‘There!’ she says – then leans forward.
‘The inspectors are due in this afternoon and there’s a rat in the garden.’

Rose is slumped in her chair, asleep.
‘She just finished a big, big lunch,’ says Pearl, the live-in carer. And to emphasise the point, she puffs out her cheeks, widens her eyes and makes a ‘heap’ mime with her hands.
I know what she’s had for dessert, at least, because Rose’s husband Lonnie is still patiently working his way through it, his bulbous nose a half-inch from the skin of the custard. He’s chomping and lip-smacking so loudly I could shut my eyes and imagine I was in a stall with a donkey – that, and the range of other farmyard noises that roll out of him every now and again.
Pearl shakes her head.
‘It is always the same at mealtimes,’ she says. ‘Loud.’
I stroke Rose gently on the hand to wake her up, then set to work taking her blood pressure, temperature and so on. The whole while, Lonnie shovels his way through his bread pudding and custard. He finishes about the same time as me, wearily pushing the bowl aside, leaning back in the chair, sighing and belching and pawing at his straining belt like a sad troll who’d eaten one too many villagers.
I sit down to write up my notes. Rose is asleep again.
‘Exciting life, ‘ain’t it?’ says Lonnie, staring at me with a pouchy hang to his face.
‘Depends what you’re used to.’
‘Desert fox,’ he says, tapping his chest.
‘Dessert fox?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
He stares at me balefully, then carries on.
‘He was a madman, n’all’ he says at last.
‘Who was?’
‘Montgomery.’
‘Oh?’
‘He comes strutting up like the cock o’the walk, and he says to us Good news chaps. You’re going home. Only trouble is, you’ve got to fight your way through Europe to get there, starting in Sicily.” Mind you, they were all like that. You had two enemies, the Germans and the officers. And of the two of ‘em, the officers were the ones you had to watch the most. Thing was, if you was rich in them days, you had three ways to go. If you were bright you went in the Church. Not so bright, the Civil Service.  Absolute idiot, your family bought you a commission in the army.’
‘Nothing changes.’
He laughs, but I’m not sure he heard me.
‘I was a gamekeeper before I got called up,’ he says.
‘Good shot, were you?’
‘What?’
‘Gamekeeper. A good shot. I bet they liked that in the army.’
‘I shot a few people. We all did. It was the war. That was our job.’
‘Must have been awful.’
He sighs again.
I carry on writing.
‘Someone said I should write a book about the whole thing,’ he says after a while.
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Why don’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nah!’ he says. ‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

‘I really want to change my last name,’ says Annette over coffee. ‘I’ve never liked it. Annette Abbot. Annette Abbot. Ah! Ah! Ah!’ She waggles her jaw up and down. ‘Sounds like I’ve got something stuck in my throat.
‘How long’ve you been married?’
‘Twenty years.’
She takes a sip of coffee.
‘He might need a little reassurance then, your husband.’
‘Maybe. He knows how I feel about it, though. And now the kids are grown up, does it matter? I’ve no idea how to go about it, though. It’s probably more hassle than it’s worth.’
‘What was your maiden name?’
‘Swansborough. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Annette Swansborough. Like one of them film stars from the Thirties.’
‘You could have some pictures taken.’
‘Well I will. When I get my passport renewed.’
She finishes her coffee and starts getting her things together ready for the afternoon visits.
‘Why don’t you have it hyphenated? That way you’d get the best of both.’
‘Abbot-Swansborough? That’s no better, is it? I’d sound like a village in Dorset. No, I think I just need to go back to my maiden name. It’s who I am.’
She shoulders her bag, pats her pockets, checks her glasses are still on top of her head, and turns to go, just pausing long enough to tell me one last thing.
‘That reminds me when I was at a patient’s house,’ she says. ‘I was working with Anne, that lovely new nurse, you know? The patient had an unusual name, can’t remember what. Anyway, Anne said she was the same, her last name being Pratt. Which means when you write her name down it comes out A. Pratt. She said she’d always hated that, but she was married so what could she do? And I was like you. I said why don’t you hyphenate it? With your husband’s surname before yours? It might soften the blow. But she said no, absolutely not. Why? What’s his name? Wright, she said. A. Wright-Pratt. God, we laughed so much I got cramps. And the rest of the visit every time we caught each other’s eye we’d start up all over again.’

‘How long’ve you lived here?’
Dorothy laughs and nods towards the other end of the room.
‘I was born over there,’ she says. ‘in that corner.’
I turn to look, even though it was ninety years ago, and the nappies and towels and pillows and bed have long since gone, along with the partition wall.
‘I’ve lived in lots of different places since then, of course,’ she says, ‘but I came back to look after Mum in her last years,  and then when David was demobbed after the war we just kind of stayed on. And that was that.’
Dorothy is as trim and bright as a woman half her age. She sets the tray of tea things down and pours David’s cup first.
He’s sitting by the window, an imposing figure still, despite his age and illness.
‘If your hair gets any longer I’m going to plait it,’ she says, handing him a cup of tea with a biscuit balanced on the saucer.
‘I’d like that,’ he says. ‘I always thought I’d make a good pirate.’
‘I’ll just finish writing up my notes and then I’ll be off,’ I tell them.
‘No rush,’ says Dorothy.
David stares out of the window, into the street.
‘I was very glad to come home,’ he says. ‘I’d joined up before the war. Couldn’t think what else to do, you see? And I went all through it. India. Europe, the whole invasion thing. Ended up on a boat heading for Japan. Then they dropped the bomb, and turned us round again.’
‘Wasn’t it the anniversary recently? The dropping of the bomb?’
‘Seventy years. A terrible business, but I must admit, we were all pretty relieved. Our lot were heading for this particular bay – nothing special, not like one of the main ports – and yet still we were told to expect around forty thousand casualties. We knew the Americans had suffered badly at Okinawa. We had no illusions about what lay ahead for us. I certainly didn’t expect to come home.’
He finishes his tea in a couple of gulps, then holding the empty cup, stares out of the window at the traffic moving sluggishly backwards and forwards in the bright afternoon sunshine.
‘A nasty, nasty business,’ he says, coming back to the moment, and putting his cup back on the saucer. ‘I just don’t know where the time goes.’
‘No, but your hair does,’ says Dorothy. ‘More tea?’

I’m running a commode out to a patient as a favour to a colleague. I’ve got another call to make before I’m off, and if I’m to finish on time it’ll be a close-run thing, but at least this is simple enough. My only worry is the address. Old Nonesuch Road is about the longest road in the county, possibly the country. Number Twelve doesn’t sound all that credible, given that my satnav has placed the postcode somewhere in the middle. Still, I take it on trust, and eventually turn off the Nonesuch into a little drive that runs between twelve and fourteen.
I ring the bell.

No answer.

It’s not unusual for a patient or their relative to take time coming to the door. They need a commode, after all; they’re bound to be slow. After a while I press the bell again. Maybe I didn’t push hard enough. I listen closely, and hear it ring deep inside the house.

No answer.

I look around for a key safe, check my notes. Ring the bell again, knock.

Nothing.

Just as I’m about to call the office and ask for clarification, the front door flies open and an extraordinary woman stands there. She has a pile of hair as woolly and full as the fleece from an Angora goat, painted eyebrows in two thinly arched lines, bright pink eye-shadow, a scarlet rosebud mouth, all above a shabby cerise top and holed slacks.
She smiles, her teeth pasty with the remains of a sandwich.
‘Ye-es?’ she says.
‘Hi! I’ve been asked to drop round a commode…?’
‘Got one!’ she says, folding her arms and looking me up and down. ‘District nurse came round about an hour ago!’
‘Oh! Well! That’s good, then!’
‘Who sent you?’
‘Who sent me? The hospital avoidance team. They said you needed a commode, for erm..’
‘My mum, yes. But no, the district nurse was only just here and she gave us one. Thanks anyway.’
‘That’s all right. I was in the area, as they say.’
‘Who does?’
‘You know. People. Who say that sort of thing.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘The hospital avoidance team. We help people with bits and pieces, to erm… keep them out of hospital.’
‘Lovely.’
There’s a pause, which I feel obliged to fill.
‘I was a bit worried about the address,’ I tell her.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Number Twelve, Nonesuch. Given that it’s a long road.’
‘It is a long road. You’re right. That’s why they have to start the numbering again at various points. Otherwise by the time you reached town you’d have house number twenty thousand and something. It’d take up the whole envelope. If you look just up there, by the bus stop? That’s where it starts at number one again. And we’re number twelve.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you knew that didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She smiles at me, her teeth crackling slightly.
‘Yes.’
She holds me there for a moment, still smiling, then glances behind her, as if she’s heard something that needs attending to.
‘When the traffic goes quiet it means the lights have changed,’ she says, taking a step back. ‘You can reverse out then if you’re quick.’
And with that she slams the door.

‘Do you want me to turn it off?’
‘No, no! Keep it running. Looks good.’
I lay my kit out, open the folder, uncap my pen. ‘What are you watching?’
‘Oh – some old sixties crap.’
A woman in a peach baby doll negligee is exploring the mad scientist’s catacombs by candlelight.
I put a cuff round Ken’s arm and start to take his blood pressure, one eye on the sphyg, one on the screen.
‘You wouldn’t do it, would you?’ I tell him, finding the systolic. ‘You just know it’s not going to end well.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘That nightie would go up in a second. Not to mention her hair.’
‘Your blood pressure’s fine,’ I tell him, ripping off the cuff.
‘Lovely.’
‘Just a couple more things and I’ll leave you alone.’
The woman is in the main chamber now. There’s a talking head covered with wires in a jar, various arms hung on the wall, and the mad scientist confronting her with a pistol.
‘What the hell is this film?’
‘I dunno,’ says Ken. ‘Frozen Nazis or something. That guy with the gun is bringing all the Nazis back by putting their heads on spare bodies. That head in the jar controls them all.’
‘Nazis, eh?’
‘I know. They never learn.’
I take his temperature.
‘Normal,’ I say, writing it down.
‘Lovely.’
It looks like the head in the jar controls all the arms on the wall. For some reason they grab the mad scientist and strangle him.
‘Why are all mad scientists German?’ says Ken as the scientist slumps to the ground – not before shooting the woman in the negligee.
There’s a close up of the head in the bottle.
Bury me! it says, in despair. Bury me!
‘That’s how I felt last time I was in hospital,’ he says. ‘Have you finished?’