Home To Roost

I

Mavis froze when she saw the arrival of the latest resident. She thought she recognized him, but it was nearly forty years ago and she could have been mistaken.

If it was him, he had put on an excessive amount of weight, and it took three of them - Mavis, the matron and another carer - to shift him from the van into one of the home’s wheelchairs. The matron asked her what was wrong and she made a feeble excuse - said she was tired and feeling the strain.

As they manoeuvred him into the wheelchair, Mavis stared intently into his face to see if there was a trace of recognition. But there was nothing, and she wondered if she might be imagining it, haunted as she was by her past. Whenever she confronted her reflection in the mirror she often wondered what had become of the beauty of those early years, and she was aware that four decades can not only change a person physically but sometimes beyond recognition. So there was no telling if it was him or not. Yet there was something about the man, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Just a feeling she had. He looked nothing like him, but she fancied she saw arrogance in his eyes, undimmed by the years and unchanged by senility.

As they wheeled him into the care home, she knew she would soon find out if her first instinct had been right, because after wheeling him into reception, matron would take him to her office to make the registration, and that’s when she would find out his name. But what if the name he’d used all those years ago was an alias? She had no way of knowing. After all, he’d been the one to insist on her working under another name. Mavis was unglamorous, he said, so he renamed her and she became Jade. He told her it sounded more exotic. Not that she minded changing her name, it made what she did feel less real, as if it was something that happened to another person.

They left him parked in the wheelchair outside the office, and Mavis held the door open for the matron to deal with the registration, while the other carer dashed off to deal with a problem in the lounge where one of the many residents was showing signs of distress. Mavis looked down at the pathetic elderly sufferer in the wheelchair while she waited at the open door, examining every detail of his puffed, wrinkled and bloated face. Surely this couldn’t be the same man, could it? Jake Jackman had been dark-haired and slim, with neat sideburns like Elvis, whereas this overweight lump of flesh was bald, with just a few wisps of grey hair clinging to the sides of his head like curling strands of cotton. She’d been told he was the victim of a massive stroke and stared into his eyes to see if there was a flicker of recognition. He made a loud spluttering noise and she jumped. She couldn’t recognise it as speech, it was like the noise deaf people sometimes make, incoherent and loud. But the fact he had attempted some sort of communication meant there was something going on inside his head. She wondered if he had recognised her. If he had, what was it he was trying to say? Remorse for what he had done to her? She doubted that very much. Jake’s only consideration had been for Jake and Jake alone.

The matron put away her notes in a desk drawer and said it was all done. She came and stood at the door and gave the man in the wheelchair the sort of smile reserved for children and pets. Mavis held her breath, waiting for the matron to speak to him, and reveal his name.

‘We’ll take you to your own room now, Graham,’ Matron said. ‘And after that we’ll get you some nice tea.’

Graham! Perhaps it wasn’t him. Perhaps she’d been mistaken. The anti-climax was overwhelming. For years she’d thought about revenge, wondering what she would do if she ever met him again. And it was a fantasy up until this moment. An occasional indulgence. Back then she was a vulnerable eighteen-year-old and he was in his late thirties. She was now in her late-fifties, and much healthier than she’d ever been. Hard work kept her occupied and in good shape. So that would make him seventy-something. Almost eighty. So she knew that if ever their paths crossed again she had nothing to fear. The man in the wheelchair certainly looked the right age. But his name was Graham. Not that it meant anything. After all, Mavis became Jade in an instant. So why couldn’t Graham become Jake? But was this man in a near vegetative state him? Perhaps she had jumped to a faulty conclusion. Yet her first instinct had warned her that here was the cause of her misery. There was only one way she could find out for sure.

As they neared Room 16, where Mrs Omar had passed away ten weeks ago, which was to be the new resident’s room, Mavis, lowered her voice as she spoke to the matron, making it sound like a half-interested enquiry, as if she was getting a more rounded identity of the man.

‘Does Graham have a surname?’ she whispered, aware the man in the wheelchair could probably hear every word.

‘Yes, of course he does,’ the matron replied, opening the door for Mavis to push in the wheelchair. Once they were inside the small neat room, the matron addressed the man jovially, though it was said for Mavis’s benefit, in reply to her enquiry. ‘Here we are, Mr Jackman. This is your own little room.’

Mavis imagined she could hear the screech of tyres, a car skidding to a halt. Time was suspended for an instant. Her breathing became shallow and she felt herself overheating. She clutched the back of the wheelchair for support and thought for a moment she might faint..

‘You all right, Mavis?’ said the matron. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

Mavis’s voice was hoarse when she replied. ‘It’s the heat. Makes me feel a bit woozy.’

‘It’s always the same temperature, Mavis. You know that.’

‘I’ll be fine. Just a sudden nauseous feeling, that’s all. It’ll pass.’

And it had passed. It was the initial shock. It was definitely him, she was sure of it now. Jackman. Her first reaction coupled with the surname was too much of a coincidence. It had to be him. It just had to be. And she couldn’t imagine that swaggering Soho pimp using a suburban name like Graham. He had probably adopted a name with a tougher image. So if it was him - and she was sure it was - he was now the vulnerable one. After all these years, she had him right where she wanted him.

One of the porters arrived, coughing to announce his entrance, and bringing Jackman’s belongings from the van. It was lunchtime and matron suggested that Mavis take Graham to the dining area just off the lounge and feed him, while she prepared his room and unpacked his clothes.

Mavis nodded dutifully. ‘I look forward to that very much,’ she said ominously, staring into Jackman’s face, searching for any sign of an understanding. She wheeled him to the dining area and parked his wheelchair at an angle in front of one of the dining tables. One of the kitchen staff, an Asian woman, her head covered in a purple scarf, brought a plate of mashed potatoes, fish in white sauce and peas and placed it on the table. Mavis mashed up a small mound of the food with the back of a fork, scooped a little mound of it on to a spoon, and moved it slowly towards Jackman’s mouth. He opened his mouth to accept the offering, his lips moving up and down eagerly like a fledgling bird. Mavis stopped, holding the spoon inches from his mouth. She saw panic in his eyes, and smiled heartlessly, enjoying the feeling of power she held over this useless lump of flesh. You know who I am don’t you, you bastard? She put the spoon back on the plate and leant forward to talk to him quietly, their heads close like two conspirators.

‘Remember me, Jake?’ She saw the comprehension in his eyes, a flicker of alarm. ‘Oh, yes, you bastard, you know fuckin’ well, don’t you? I’ve got you just where I want you. You are not getting away from me. You are going to suffer for what you done to me.’

II

Jackman’s cramped Soho flat was on the top floor of a ramshackle building in a narrow passageway which ran between Wardour Street and Dean Street, with a red telephone box which stood sentinel at one end of the alley. Inside the box, the space above the telephone was plastered with postcards offering the delights of Trudi, Amber, Candy and countless other call girls; one only had to pick up the phone and dial to experience the guilty pleasures of what has moved the world since time began. At the centre of the alley was a shop window, lit up with a neon sign and the simple message ‘sex’. Displayed under the sign on boxes covered with fading magenta crepe paper was a display of luridly-titled videos and magazines, and a mannequin dressed in bondage leather stood in a corner of the window, peering through a mask with lifeless eyes, whip in hand. On the opposite side of the entrance to the sex shop was a permanently open door, and a notice on the frame scrawled with felt-tip pen in red offered the delights of a euphemistically named ‘model’ on the first floor, instructing the customer to ring the bell before ascending. The staircase was narrow, uncarpeted and each stair creaked loudly like the sound effect from a horror film. On the second floor lived the landlord who sublet the first floor flat on a pro rata basis to whichever pimp or call girl needed a working premise for a few hours or days, depending on whether or not trade was busy. Above his flat on the top floor was Jackman’s two- room flat, and he had often toyed with the idea of using it for the same purposes as his landlord, but it was clearly out of the question, since his landlord wouldn’t entertain any competition in the same building. So the flat was just somewhere for Jackman to sleep, although he often woke late, then spent what was left of the morning studying the form for the day’s racing, before going out and spending the rest of the day at the bookmaker’s and pubs. He occasionally made forays by train to race meetings, but more often than not he stuck to Soho like a ship’s barnacle. He was an inveterate gambler, although he tried to confine himself to horses, kidding himself there was a science in studying the form, the weights, the handicaps. He bet heavily, and would sometimes win enormous amounts of money, but often he would crash and burn, and end up having to borrow hugely, paying back money borrowed at extortionate rates of interest. During the down times he thought about how advantageous it would be to find an accommodating young girl willing to be exploited. If only he could find this buffer from his losses, a guaranteed income. Unfortunately, he knew only too well that if he was lucky enough to find a willing meal ticket, there were other men in Soho - men with connections - he didn’t dare challenge. These were influential hoodlums and it was dangerous to muscle in on their territory and rackets. So he abandoned any hope of living off a girl’s immoral earnings - certainly as far as Soho was concerned.

But whenever he was flushed from winnings, and feeling horny, he liked to visit more exclusive call girls in Mayfair’s Shepherd Market. These were the high class prostitutes whose clientele were streets away from the shabby losers who climbed the stairs to the first floor of his Soho building. And once, on one of his many visits to Shepherd Market, he thought he recognised a member of parliament leaving his favourite call girl’s flat. It was after these Mayfair visits that he dreamt his dream. He became ambitious. Not for him a seedy little Soho room with a naked red light bulb. One day, he promised himself, when he was on a roll, he would find the perfect floozy and set her up in Mayfair. But he needed a bird with film star looks. A stunner A Diana Dors look-alike, maybe. But, as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, his avaricious and licentious dreams became as threadbare as the carpet in his flat. Until one day, when his dreams had all but popped like a soap bubble, he bumped into Mavis. .

After a traumatic childhood in Ipswich, growing up in a strict Catholic orphanage, Mavis escaped to London on her eighteenth birthday, and swore she would never look back, never go to church and never have children of her own. In spite of her scarred upbringing, Mavis was stunningly good looking, and because she had never been indulged like loved and spoilt children, her figure was perfectly proportioned and temptingly sensual. She was a natural blonde with high cheekbones, sparkling blue eyes, and turned men’s heads wherever she walked. When Jackman spotted her wandering aimlessly around Piccadilly Circus one evening, staring wistfully at the flashing neon lights, he knew he’d found his gravy train. But he was smart enough to realise he couldn’t leap in with his Mayfair proposition and needed to bide his time. Discovering she had only six pounds between solvency and destitution, and flushed from a good day at the bookies, he treated her to a slap-up meal at an Italian restaurant in Greek Street. During the meal he discovered she had nowhere to stay, having arrived at Liverpool Street station that very day carrying a heavy suitcase, which she had booked in at a left luggage bureau before taking the tube train to Piccadilly. He offered her a room for the night, then accompanied her to pick up her suitcase, and hired a taxi to bring her back to his Soho flat. He expected her to make some sort of objection to the location of the flat, seeing as it was above a sex shop and a flat of prostitution, but although she ascended the stairs with fear and apprehension, his generosity and understanding dispelled her dismay once she was settled in his flat.

That first night he was cunning enough to play the considerate charmer, and they drank gins and tonics way into the night. She told him about her life at the orphanage, and he detected the bitterness and her inclination to escape her past, and knew he could play on her desire to lead a more exciting life. As the alcohol freed her inhibitions, she admitted she wasn’t a virgin, having been sexually abused by a male member of staff at the orphanage ever since she was fourteen-years-old. Now Jake, as he called himself, subtly suggested they made a move into the bedroom, and told her he would respect her and understand if she didn’t want to have sex with him. It worked. He knew she felt she was in his debt, and had only one thing to offer, to pay him back for his generosity.

The very next day he asked her if she would start taking the birth pill, and because she didn’t want to give birth to an unwanted child, she readily agreed. For weeks she was happy. And so was he, thinking that he might have fallen for her. But the biggest part of him was absorbed by his own needs and desires which came before anything else, and he spent most of his days gambling, leaving her alone in the flat, returning late in the evening to satisfy his own cravings. Mavis spent so long on her own in the small flat, she became bored and restless. She felt as trapped as she had in the holy sisters’ orphanage and wanted to escape. Twice in their first month together he took her with him to the races, once to Folkestone and then to Kempton Park, but these two outings only swelled her discontent, giving her a teasing taste of freedom, freedom from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the shabby Soho flat. Occasionally, after a day gambling in Soho bookies, he returned in the evening and took her on pub crawls, where she developed a craving for gin. But mostly these outings were infrequent, and she became frustrated and resentful, although she tried to curb her feelings, knowing she was being supported by him, and the only thing she had to offer in return was the sex he demanded when he returned from the betting shops and pubs at night. So, although she became dependent on him, she determined that one day soon she would rouse herself and perhaps get a job, although she had no qualifications or work experience. And, as the days slipped by, nothing changed. She was torn between wanting something better and the debt she owed her saviour.

Jake, on the other hand, was content with things as they were. After all, she seemed to bring him luck. Most of the horses he chose romped first past the post, and by the end of their first month together he was richer by five-hundred pounds, a substantial sum in the mid-Seventies.

And then the honeymoon period came to an abrupt end.

As soon as she heard his feet tramping up the narrow stairs one evening, she could tell by the defeated tread and scrape of his soles on the curling linoleum outside the door that a great change had come about and things might never be the same again. As he entered the small living room, with its shabby alcove kitchen, she could tell he’d lost everything. She could tell by the slump of his shoulders, and the way his eyes darted guiltily away from her probing stare.

‘How much have you last, Jake?’ she demanded.

Exhausted by the trauma of wiping out five hundred pounds in less than two hours, he collapsed into a mangy armchair. He let his head tilt back and stared at the ceiling, his eyes vacant but his mind replaying the recent events of a gambler’s what might have been if only he’d bet on his first choice.

‘You had as much as five hundred quid, Jake. Don’t tell me you lost it all.’

He sat up suddenly, leaned forward and glared at her. ‘I need a drink.’ He stared pointedly at the empty gin bottle. ‘You’ve fucking drunk it all.’

‘I was depressed. Knowing you’d blow everything.’

‘Don’t use my bad luck as an excuse. You’re becoming a fucking lush, sweetheart. There was half a bottle left in that. You’ve done half a bottle in less than two hours.’

He stood up, eyes puffed with anger, and she thought for a minute he was going to hit her. But he restrained himself and sat at the table opposite her, on the chair with the wonky leg. He dropped his head into his hands and sighed.

‘Christ! I’m sorry, sweetheart. I was on a roll. I could’ve cleaned up. It was the last race I bet on... the fucking favourite in a three horse race... lost by half a length. Half a fucking length! No one could have seen that one coming. I was up nearly two grand, and I could have come away with three.’

Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened. It was incredible. How could he be so stupid? Up by as much as two thousand pounds and he goes and throws it back at the bookies. ‘I can’t believe how stupid you are,’ she snapped. ‘The only winners are the bookies.’

He glared at her, hating her and her truth. ‘Tell me something I don’t know. And whose fucking money was it anyhow? It’s not as if it was yours. Who bought that gin you drunk?’ He jabbed an angry thumb at his breastbone. ‘I did. That’s who. I pay the rent for this gaff, and I’ve been providing you with food and drink. I’ve even give you money to buy clothes.’

‘I’ll pay you back, Jake. Soon as I get a job.’

He laughed harshly. ‘Oh yeah? What you gonna work as? Barmaid? How much d’you think you’ll earn as a barmaid or a waitress?’ Suddenly, he stared at her with a glint in his eyes and his mouth widened into a broad grin. ‘I’ve got a better idea. A much better idea of how you can earn good money.’

She knew exactly what he was driving at and thought about the women who plied their trade on the first floor of the building. Shaking her head rapidly, she said, ‘If you think you can put me downstairs with those filthy... ’

He didn’t let her finish. His grin broadened as he placed a hand over hers and squeezed. ‘Relax, sweetheart. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. No, I’ve got other plans for you and me, baby.’

Over the next few weeks he borrowed enough money from a loan shark to put down a deposit for a small Mayfair flat, and then he coaxed her, begged her, and threatened her. Eventually, she reluctantly agreed, and she was put to work with him as her pimp and protector. At first, he promised she would do no more than two tricks a day for well-heeled clients, but his gambling habit needed supporting, so she had to resort to five men a day. She was now swept into his circle of increasing debt. Then, one day, her nightmares began.

Usually, Jake arranged the client visits, and made certain he was nearby in case she needed help. Most of her clients were either married, and even if they weren’t they were the sort of men who demanded total discretion, and most of them probably had family commitments at weekends. Therefore, as in the title of the Greek film, Mavis -

or Jade as she was now known as - never worked on a Sunday, and Jake usually took her out for lunch, or she would go shopping in Oxford Street. But this one particular Sunday, when she awoke, Jake was gone. At first, she thought he had gone out to buy milk or the News of the World, as he occasionally did on a Sunday morning; but by late afternoon there was still no sign of him. And then the doorbell rang. Usually, clients announced themselves, saying they had an appointment at a certain time, and she would remotely unlatch the street door for them. But this was a Sunday and she wasn’t expecting any clients. Unless Jake had gone out, got pissed and lost his key.

She clicked the speaker entry and asked who it was.

‘ Jade, I’m a friend of Jake’s. He asked me to call round to collect you. And bring you for surprise birthday party.’

She had no idea when it was Jake’s birthday, and had no reason to doubt the man, so she pressed the button to open the door to the building, and waited near the flat door for the man to climb the four flights to the second floor. She heard several footsteps, wondering why there was more than one person, and she was suddenly afraid. Something was not quite right. She began to open the door slowly and peered cautiously through the gap. That was when the door flew open, hitting her in the shoulder. There were two of them, and they shoved her backwards, entered the flat and slammed the door behind them.

Her life ended at the moment. She was slapped, cried out and was told it would be worse if she didn’t shut up. She cried silently, tears streaming down her cheeks like rainwater. They were large men, overweight but strong, with cruel faces and foreign accents. Through her heaving sobs she asked for Jake, but the men just laughed, telling her he owed them money. She now belonged to them. Jake had sold her to them to clear his debt.

That was when one of them held her down while the other took out a syringe and injected a vein in her arm. She thought it might be something to put her to sleep, and she begged them to stop. But instead of passing out, she experienced a strange feeling of elation, an unreality wiping out her fears. But when they began to undress her roughly, she struggled and cried out. She was slapped again, and then both men raped her. She lost any sense of time, her life playing at a slower speed. She gave up struggling, and didn’t know whether the experience was a swirling dream or a nightmare. Horrific and illusory images propelled her towards loathing and self-hatred, and she wished herself dead. Everything became a blur as she felt herself becoming a discarded and useless heap of nothing. She couldn’t remember much of what happened later. She vaguely remembered staggering, being half-carried down the stairs. A hand gripping her tightly by the throat. A car journey. For how long she had no idea. Then stumbling down stone steps into a dank basement.

Ten years later she was still there, a slave to heroin and sex. She discovered the men who had brought her there were Maltese. She knew Malta was an island but she had no idea where it was. It could have been in the South Pacific as far as she was concerned. There was another girl who was kept in another room in the damp sex-smelling basement, run by an older woman, who resembled one of the men who had brought her there. She guessed she might have been either the man’s mother or an older sister.

She was forced to have sex with at least ten clients a day, minimum. She was given a small amount of money and allowed out to visit a pub or to shop for clothes now and again. Of course, she could have escaped, just walked away, got on a train and travelled to anywhere she chose within reasonable distance to London. But she was well and truly hooked on heroin. Besides, she didn’t have a single person whom she could approach for help, not a single friend in the world.

Then, in the mid-eighties, the Soho basement where she was kept was raided, the Maltese gangsters were arrested and the brothel was shut down. Then began her long struggle in and out of rehab, visits to psychiatrists and social services, which wiped out almost another decade. Eventually, because of her hatred of Jake, the man she rightly blamed as the cause of her tragic existence for the last twenty years, she switched from self-loathing, and her anger was projected at the evil monster who sold her to pay his gambling debts. The anger gave her the strength to turn herself round, and she successfully kicked the heroin habit and became one of the more devoted employees at the care home.

But, on her day’s off, she often thought about Jake, wondering what became of him. She also wondered what she would do to him should there paths ever cross again, and she sometimes fantasised about taking her revenge in the most brutal way.

III

Whenever Mavis approached Jake in the residents’ lounge, he moaned incoherently and she wondered if this was from fear or guilt, because she was now convinced he remembered her. There was a certain depth of understanding in his eyes, even though he found it difficult to communicate.

She spent more time with him than with any of the other residents, and the matron thought it was because he was the most needy, and Mavis was merely trying to help him to adjust to the home and his condition.

After her first talk to him, while she fed him his lunch, she made it clear he would suffer for what he had done to her. But she had no idea of how she could make this man suffer any more than he did already. What could she do to him? Spit in his food before feeding him? Squeeze his balls hard when no one was watching. After all, if he cried out no one would know what he was trying to say. They would just think he was upset about his condition and his inability to communicate. Or when she did her night shift, perhaps she could enter Room 16 and keep him from sleeping. She had seen a television documentary where they showed sleep deprivation as one of the worst forms of torture.

. But, because of all the revenge fantasies in the past, seeking satisfaction at his expense seemed to have dissipated. She questioned how anyone could take revenge on this pathetic lump of flesh. Wasn’t he suffering enough now, locked as he was inside his body, unable to fend for himself? Totally reliant on carers like her for everything. And yet... she still craved some sort of satisfaction. Then an idea came to her, something which seemed only right and proper. She sat herself close to him one quiet afternoon after many of the other residents were dozing or watching television and cleared her throat softly prior to speaking. She saw the wary look in his eyes and knew he could comprehend what was going on. So she began by speaking softly, telling him about her life outside the home.

‘You know, Jake,’ she said in a voice full of soft sympathy, ‘I feel sorry for the way you’re locked inside your head. I think it must be as bad as a jail sentence. If not worse. Yes, definitely worse. Even when someone is locked in a cell they can decide whether or not to get up and read a book or watch TV. Whereas you... you’re stuck there in your head but unable to make any decisions yourself. None at all.’

She grinned to let him know she would enjoy tormenting him. He let out a loud whale cry and she saw the flicker of terror in his eyes. She patted his hand gently.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I’m not going to hurt you. Just talk to you, and tell you about my days.’ Her voice soothing, she began to enjoy herself. This was her therapy now.

‘Know what I done on my day off last week, Jake? Did a bit of window shopping, then I went into Starbucks and had a hot chocolate and cake. Sat there for as long as I pleased and read a book. That’s what freedom’s all about, ain’t it? Being free to do what you want, when you want. It was such a lovely day. After that I went an walked in the park - watched the children playing, some kids feeding ducks at the lake - and although nothing much was happening, it was such a warm day, and I could appreciate just being alive and being able to walk around and please myself. An’ you know what I done in the afternoon? Went to this friendly little boozer I know - nice little local it is - and I had a couple of glasses of white wine. I can do that now, see. I can enjoy a drink without feeling I need to go on the hard stuff. I drink moderately, sometimes go days without a drink - especially when I’m working. But that’s the great thing about freedom, ain’t it? You can please yourself and not have to rely on anyone. It must be terrible for you, Jake. Stuck in that chair all day, relying on others to feed you. And still knowing what’s going on. Because you do know, don’t you sweetheart? Only too well.’

She stared into his eyes and smiled. It was then that he let out an enormous, attention-seeking guttural cry, and for a moment she thought one of the other carers would come running over to see what was wrong. But the smiling, caring way Mavis rubbed Jake’s cheeks tenderly and soothed him, dispelled any worries someone might have and let her get on with attending to her patient - the patient she appeared to care for more than any of the other residents..

‘Yes, I know this upsets you, Jake, so I’m going to leave you now. And from tomorrow I won’t be here for a week. I’m off on holiday. A glorious seaside break for a week. I can’t wait to tell you all about it when I get back. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

But Mavis lied about the holiday. She would go no further from her Canning Town council flat than the local library, shops and pub. But she wasn’t going to tell Jake that. She planned to torment him by using her imagination.

When she returned a week later, and saw him staring into space in the residents’ lounge, a bull-bellow came from deep inside him as he spotted her walking towards him. She gave him a triumphant smile as she got closer, registering the alarm in his eyes. She pulled up a chair, sat close to him and patted his knee.

‘There, there, Jake!’ she giggled, enjoying the effective therapy of using her ingenuity to make his purgatory worse. ‘I’m here now to tell you all about my holiday. I know you want to hear all about it. It was wonderful just walking along the beach, looking in rock pools. Watching kids flying kites, and the air was so clear and the sky so blue, with seagulls darting and swooping. And then, at the end of such free days, sitting outside a pub in the evening, sipping wine and having a meal. It’s so wonderful to be free and able to please yourself, and not having to rely on others. It must be terrible to be in your condition. You know, while I was away, I thought of sending you a postcard, saying “wish you were here”, but that would have been a lie. So I thought I’d save up all my news to share with you. I expect you enjoy hearing about how I love the freedom of my life now. As soon as I walk away from the care home, I can please myself what I do, because I’m independent, you see. Which is more than can be said for someone not a million miles from here. Oh, yes, there’s something to be said for having the liberty to please yourself. Now, d’you want to hear about one of my little excursions. About a little boat trip I took?’

She paused, and watched the way he seemed to shrink into the fabric of his chair. She waited for the cry of pain, and sure enough his unintelligible trumpeting blasted out over the residents’ lounge, alerting some of the other staff that perhaps something was wrong. But when the matron saw the way Mavis handled him, unruffled and sympathetic, she shook her head and smiled, knowing she could leave it in Mavis’s capable hands.

As for Mavis, she was never sure if Jake’s distress came from remorse, from his hostility towards her, or from the way she provoked and taunted him. But as far as anyone in the care home was concerned, the matron and most of the other staff all acknowledged that Mavis seemed to make a positive contribution to Mr Jackman’s well being.

And no one knew any different.