So here we are, my love. West Middlesex University Hospital. West Mid, as it’s known locally, the place you were born, where I have worked for most of my life. It’s my hospital – that’s how I think of it. Only today I’m not organising patient data, I’m not giving birth in a delivery room and no one is saying Congratulations, Mrs Flint. This time – oh my love, my darling girl – this time, fifteen years on, your dad is long gone, and you’re lying in a bed. Saline drips into your arm through a tube. And I… I’m right here by your side with nothing better, nothing more productive to do than bury my own stupid head in my own useless hands.

This is my fault. How did I let things get this far?

Come back, darling girl. I can make everything right if you just come back. I don’t know what to do, where to put myself without you.

Without you, I make no sense. I am alone. I am pointless.

Come back…

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We were all right before all this, weren’t we? We thought we weren’t but, looking back, we were. We were so much more all right than we realised, as all right as anyone, our good days as happy as anyone else’s, our bad days no worse: the car not starting, or getting soaked in a sudden downpour, or a bank card getting eaten by the machine. Normal bad stuff – black-sock-in-the-white-wash stuff.

Maybe it had taken us so long to get to that level of all right that we didn’t realise we had got there, that we had made it.

Did we forget to start living afterwards, Rosie? Yes, at first. Of course we did. We were taken up with the business of surviving. But I like to think that, these last couple of years, we had started to live, you know, in the sense of taking joy in everyday things, like laughter, food cooked for deliciousness and company rather than for the sole purpose of nutrition. Each other. Your auntie Bridge, you and me, we were getting on with it, weren’t we? We felt joy; we achieved joy, didn’t we? Not all the time, but sometimes, and that’s enough, isn’t it? For anyone.

And now here I am by your side, alone with my thoughts, but I can’t tell you what I’m thinking, or that I’m sorry, because you can’t hear me. I hope we’re going to be all right again. Sometimes I call your name, but you don’t respond. I hold your hand, but it is limp in mine. They said you will wake up, not to worry. But worrying is what I do, Rosie – you know that. Your auntie Bridge says I’d win gold in the Worry Olympics, doesn’t she? When you wake up, then we’ll talk. We’ll really talk this time. We’ll move on from all of this, if you allow us to, but first I must tell you I am sorry. I am so very sorry.

The floor squeaks.

‘How’s you?’ A nurse appears at my side. She lays a hand on my shoulder a moment, unhooks your chart from the end of your bed. Overdose, that’s what she’s reading there. That’s the word on the sheet. I fight shame, the urge to explain. The less I say, the better. She puts the chart back on its hook and looks at me with a compassionate expression. ‘Can I bring you a cup of tea, Mrs Flint?’

Tea. The British cure-all. Makes me think of World War II, of the poster that was all the rage the other year: Keep Calm and Carry On.

‘Call me Toni,’ I say. ‘Everyone does. I work here, actually, in Records.’

‘Do you?’ She smiles and folds her arms over her chest. She doesn’t have a large bosom, a bosom you could lay your head on and cry, but she should have, do you know what I mean? She has that comforting manner about her. ‘So you know your way about then.’ It’s a statement, not a question, but I answer anyway:

‘Yes.’

‘So.’ Eyes on mine, she raises her eyebrows for a new question. ‘Milk and sugar?’

‘That’s very kind.’ I check her name badge. ‘Thank you, Linda. Milk and half a sugar.’

She touches my shoulder again, lightly, before walking away. Her white rubber clogs squeak, squeak, squeak as she disappears into the corridor.

I turn back to you in hope, but nothing, no change. I can only talk to you here in my head. I’m thinking about you, and I’m thinking about me and about how I thought I was looking after you. I thought I was protecting you, but I think now you were protecting me, weren’t you?

Me, you, Auntie Bridge. Auntie Bridge looking after me and you, me looking after you and Auntie Bridge, you looking after your auntie Bridge and me. You could put us on a diagram, couldn’t you? We would be a triangle. But would you, would anyone really be able to look at that triangle and know which was the base and which was the point?

Tell me, Rosie: who was looking after whom?