MORNING SERIAL

SHE decided we needed coffee and she needed a visit to the bathroom while the kettle boiled. She could see the kettle and the coffee in the kitchen and walked in to switch it on, but she didn’t need to ask where the bathroom was. She went straight upstairs on the internal wooden staircase to my left. I watched her come back down in a cloud of certainty. I would not be hers to use again. The coffee came in white porcelain mugs covered with the blue of a forget-me-not pattern courtesy of the National Trust. Or so it said on the bottom. That Tommy never failed to surprise.

“Instant OK?” she asked. Too late now, I thought, as I sipped the scalding hot gravy mix spooned from the industrial size instant coffee tin that was more in keeping with Tommy the builder than the mugs someone had bought for him, but I said:

“Yeah – fine. So, tell me again, what brings you here?”

She gave me a smile so coy she must have employed it last in nursery school. She was perched on the edge of a matching chair. Almost in touching distance. Almost.

“I’d have thought that it was obvious. No?”

“No,” I whispered back. “No” sounded a bit ungrateful, but I was compensating for broken ribs with my new monosyllabic personality. She sucked on her lower lip. That was awful pretty to see. I stirred again but this time, fat chance anyway, refused to be shaken. And my faithless companion was much reduced, and nubby anyway. Age, I guessed.

“What did Tommy tell you?” was my only follow-up now.

“What I told you … that he … and Lionel … found you. Being kicked. Rescued you. Brought you here to get better.”

“How’d he know where I’d be?”

“Sorry?”

“No. I am. Tommy’s OK. He’s just not smart, is he?”

Bran crossed and uncrossed her legs. It wasn’t meant to be distracting; it was just a reflex. I tried not to be distracted. My reflexes failed. Old nubby uncoiled a little but I needed to stay coiled. And to remember.