It was meant to be my birthday. In the afternoon I watched Corinne take notes out of my wallet in my own kitchen and slide them into her handbag, and when I said so, my son did not ask her a single question. He took my arm hard enough to leave marks, walked me down the hallway, told me to stay in there and stop causing trouble, and shut the utility room door. Then I heard the lock. I sat down on the concrete with my shoulder throbbing, listening to the music and the glasses and the laughter in the house I paid off across thirty one years of double shifts.

The phone in my apron lining still held charge. The number I dialled belonged to Ilse Brandt, who had been my supervisor at the hospital laundry and who, eighteen years earlier, when her husband put her in a hospital bed, had promised me she would come if I ever needed her. She is a magistrate’s clerk now.Continues…