Fairytales Don't Come True: Criminal Conversation, #1

By Laura Lyndhurst

When middle-aged nurse Dora Stuart-Frazer is assigned to provide end-of-life care to ex-prostitute Magdalena, she suffers a failure of sympathy linked to the woman's career and her own marital issues. It's her job—her vocation to care. Trying to overcome her prejudices against her patient and the other members of the all-female household, Dora is drawn into their world. Mags has cancer and it won't be long now. She is an unwilling listener to the sordid life-story that her patient wants to recount in her last few weeks of life. It's her dying wish to get her story out and as such, it's Dora's job to listen. However, every night as her patient's story unfolds, Dora needs more. She is transfixed and a willing listener as she compares the life of the story teller to her own and forces herself to confront her mid-life crisis. In this race against time, Dora has to know it all—but fears Mags won't make it to the end.

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Laura Lyndhurst
• Release date: May 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9798224642335

Laura Lyndhurst

Laura Lyndhurst was born and grew up in North London, England, before marrying and travelling with her husband in the course of his career. When settled back in the UK she became a mature student and gained Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English and Literature before training and working as a teacher. She started writing in the last few years in the peace and quiet of rural Lincolnshire, and published her debut novel, Fairytales Don't Come True, in May 2020. This book forms the first of a trilogy, Criminal Conversation, of which the second is Degenerate, Regenerate and All That We Are Heir To the third. Innocent, Guilty, the first of another trilogy, continues the story told in these three books and leads on to The Future of Our House, which is followed by Uphill, Downhill, Over, Out as the sixth and final book to end the series. Laura also developed a taste for psychological suspense, which led to the writing and publication of You Know What You Did, to which What Else Did You Do? is the sequel. Laura has also published four small books of poems, October Poems, Thanksgiving Poems and Prose Pieces, Poet-Pourri and Social Climbing and Other Poems.

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Fairytales Don't Come True

Criminal Conversation, Volume 1

Laura Lyndhurst

Published by Laura Lyndhurst, 2020.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

FAIRYTALES DON'T COME TRUE

First edition. May 16, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 Laura Lyndhurst.

ISBN: 979-8224642335

Written by Laura Lyndhurst.

To G,

For all his patience and assistance.

1: AN ODD HOUSEHOLD

Just because nursing is a respectable profession, mused Dora Stuart-Frazer, doesn’t mean that all the clients you treat are respectable. Take the case she was on her way to now, for example. In a good area, leafy and suburban, on the outskirts of a Cathedral city in the South of England, a bizarre and mismatched household headed by one female university lecturer, who was the house owner, Dora gathered. There was one rather common middle-aged Irish woman who appeared to be her cleaner, the latter’s daughter—a nursing student at the lecturer’s university—a little girl, of about three to four years old, who she presumed to be the student’s child, and a young-ish ex-prostitute.

Dora wouldn’t have known that her patient had been a prostitute, because it was she for whom the nurse was providing care, except that the woman didn’t hide the fact when passing the time talking while Dora attended to her needs. Not only a prostitute, but one who’d been in prison and released early on compassionate grounds because she didn’t have long to live.

Thereafter Dora was somewhat distant in manner, her disapproval obvious, although she was unaware of the fact until the young woman issued a gentle reproof.

‘I can ask them to send someone else if you like. I’m afraid you’re not happy having to deal with me.’

Dora denied the charge, blustering about feeling a little off-colour, then reproached herself on her way home. For heaven’s sake, Dora, get a hold on yourself. You’re supposed to be a nurse, and a Christian, where’s your compassion? She’d never had such issues before, so why now?

Perhaps it was because the girl—for that was all she was, she must be under thirty even with the ravages the cervical cancer had made on her—didn’t fit the profile of a prostitute which Dora had fixed in her mind. She was gentle, polite and self-effacing to a fault, almost humble, as though apologizing for being such a bother as to need Dora’s much-in-demand nursing skills. Not common either, not like the Irish woman, the cleaner, who had a raucous way with her, but well-spoken, cultured, even. In sum, she troubled Dora because she wasn’t the hard-faced, brassy tart—to use the harsh, unsympathetic words which went through Dora’s mind—that their respectable social sisters like Dora pictured prostitutes to be. And Dora was nothing if not respectable.

It wasn’t her fault, her disapproval. She’d been raised by a strict mother, a midwife and an upstanding member of the Church, who’d always reminded her daughter that it was necessary to try even harder and to be ultra-respectable, because they were black in a majority-white country. There would always be some of the native population to hold their skin colour against them, more so if they showed the smallest divergence from what was expected. Therefore it was necessary to work hard, uphold and obey the law, show a clean house exterior to those who passed by, and observe clean behaviour both outside and inside of that house.

‘It wasn’t quite what I expected when I came over here from Jamaica,’ the mother told her daughter. ‘Some of these people who throw casual racist comments around would do well to remember that it may have been these black hands, or others like them’—extending her work-worn and still-capable arms before her—‘which brought them into the world.’ It amused her, she said, to think of this at times when she felt under racial pressure, but she lived by the doctrine of necessity which she expounded to her daughter, and Dora in her turn had followed suit.

She was proud of the achievements of her forty-eight years, consisting of a successful career in nursing, at present for a charity which provided care for the terminally-ill. She found it noteworthy that, while her mother had given her skills to bringing new lives into the world, Dora used hers to help suffering lives out of it with as little pain and as much dignity as possible.

There was also her husband, Desmond, who expected another promotion any time now for his hard work in management. She’d met him through the Church. He was from a family similar to her own, immigrants from Jamaica, Baptists with the same beliefs and values. So it had seemed meant to be when they’d hit it off at a church youth club gathering one weekend.

Dora had been shocked by the event. Some of the young people present, including Desmond, had turned on a portable radio to a music channel and begun to dance. Dora couldn’t conceal her thoughts. ‘We’re Baptists,’ she exclaimed, ‘we don’t dance.’

‘We’re black,’ countered a smiling Des, as he danced up to her and took her by the hand, ‘we’ve got rhythm in our blood.

White Baptists don’t dance, but we sure do.’ He whirled her out onto the floor where, captivated by his wide smile and laughing eyes, Dora gave up on her misplaced principles and allowed him to show her how to do it.

She didn’t need much coaching, as it happened. She had rhythm in her blood, the same as the others, it seemed, and she enjoyed dancing, with Des at any rate. They made a good couple, and when he asked her to make it a permanent arrangement off the dance floor, she didn’t hesitate to say Yes. They even hyphenated their surnames, Dora Stuart and Desmond Frazer.

It was a good life with him. They’d had fun when young and yes, even a good sex life, within the bounds of the respectable, of course, Nothing weird or kinky going on here, just healthy missionary-position sexual activity with children born as a result. Two, a son and a daughter, supported through university by Des and Dora to the point that they were successful, and now working as a doctor and a dentist respectively.

Now, the parents being middle-aged, the sexual side of things was on the decline, for Dora, at least. An early hysterectomy due to endometriosis had lessened her sex drive, although that had been rather low in the first place. Des was still keen, but he was a man of course, and they had higher sex drives, Dora thought. She tended to put off his requests with humour, ‘A man of your age,’ ‘We ought to be past that sort of thing by now,’ ‘We both have an early start tomorrow,’ and so forth.

He desisted with a good grace, even if he was rather rueful, and now Dora disapproved of prostitutes more than before, if that was possible, because just by existing they were a reminder of the constant temptation of women of any type to men. Not her man, though, not her Des, there was no latent worry in Dora’s mind that he might be tempted to go that route, one of these days.

Or was there? Des was used to getting home first in the late afternoons, while Dora’s working day often continued well into the evening, or took the form of a night shift, due to the varied needs of her patients. In recent weeks though, he’d been going out drinking with a few work colleagues on occasions. Nothing heavy, he assured her, just a couple of drinks and wind-down-from-work talk in a relaxed social setting, yet it had set Dora wondering.

Why now, after all these years of coming straight home? Who were these colleagues? Male only? Male and female? If some women were of the party, Dora wasn’t sure she wanted her Des talking and laughing with them in a pub. Work was work, but this was something else, because colleagues saw each other in a different way outside the workplace, after a few drinks. Look how notorious office Christmas parties were for unorthodox goings-on.

She knew she was being ridiculous and old-fashioned, but she couldn’t help it. Des was only human, and what if he took a fancy to one of these women, what if he had an affair? Not that he would, of course, Dora was sure, but just supposing, for argument’s sake? It would have to be divorce, there was no other option, and Dora didn’t believe in divorce, didn’t want one. She liked her life the way it was, ordered, wholesome and respectable.

So her current patient, Ms Magdalena Mystry, was an unwelcome reminder of the very existence of illicit sex, waiting to pounce on Dora’s husband, in the persons of prostitutes or other women no better than those. The result was that the compassion Dora was supposed to feel for her patients, and had never had a problem in feeling before, was lacking to an unfortunate degree in this case.

Come on, she told herself, you’re better than this. By her very name this girl ought to remind you of Mary Magdalen, who was supposed to be a reformed prostitute, even if there’s some doubt about that nowadays. Christ forgave, and so should you. She made an effort to be not only civil but friendly to the woman, on the outside, at any rate. That was all that was required, but she still felt awkward and in the wrong.

One evening, as she bent over the patient, the gold cross she always wore around her neck slipped beyond the bounds of her uniform neckline. It dangled before the face of the girl, who commented. ‘You’re a Christian? Thank you, then, for working on a Saturday.’

Dora nodded an affirmative and brushed the thanks aside as misplaced, ignorant. The majority of people these days didn’t seem to care in the slightest about respecting the Lord’s day, but most of them knew it to be Sunday, not Saturday, for Christians. Dora would work on the Sabbath if required because people who needed nurses couldn’t be ill from Monday to Saturday only to suit her convenience. She’d known that when she trained, and as she was doing the Lord’s work he’d understand, she was sure.

Something in her face must have shown the girl her error, for she apologised. ‘I’m sorry, I presumed you to be a Seventh Day Adventist. I understand that to be one of the major sects in Jamaica, and their Sabbath, I was told, happens on Saturday.’ Not so ignorant, then, Dora conceded, rather better-informed than most, in fact. She corrected the girl.

‘Oh no, I’m a Baptist.’ She was curious despite herself. ‘You seem to know something about it. Did you have a religious upbringing?’ As she tucked her cross back inside her neckline, her glance fell on the girl’s neck. There was no crucifix there, but a gold chain with a letter H pendant upon it. Strange, as the patient’s name was Magdalena. It was none of her business though, the girl would tell her if she wanted to. Which she was doing now, replying to Dora’s question.

‘Oh yes, I was raised as a Christian. My parents lived for their faith, and were strict in passing it on to me.’

Dora was perturbed. How then could the girl have landed in such a profession? In her opinion, anyone raised in the correct path of righteousness shouldn’t end up as this one had. But she seemed to understand Dora’s line of thought, and to want to explain herself.

‘I’m afraid the religion didn’t have a good effect on me, and I lost belief early on. It was a restricted life with my parents. They didn’t give me the type of upbringing other children had. I didn’t go to school, because they didn’t approve of much that was taught in the state system. They held straight-laced religious views and had narrow ideas of the world in general, it seemed to me as I got older. My father had been a teacher, before he went into the Church full-time, so he taught me at home. I learned the basics, reading, writing, English, maths, plus whatever else he considered safe.

‘But I wanted to break free, to go out and experience the wider world, to go to university, to begin with. My parents didn’t want that, though, they opposed it. They wanted me to stay at home and marry a young man they approved of within the church community. I had to fight them, and I wore them down so that they agreed, albeit with reluctance, to let me attend university. They stopped their financial support after the first year though, and I had to find a way to support myself.’

Dora was disturbed by this. She thought of her own mother, Rose, working extra hours to finance her daughter’s nursing training, her father Les doing likewise on the London underground. There weren’t exorbitant fees to pay back then, of course, but her wise parents had known that, even with a government grant, Dora would need more support from them. She thought of her own Ruth and Matthew, subject to fees and taking part-time work to help pay their way. She and Des had helped, so the children wouldn’t compromise their studies through too much time away from them.

There’d been much extra work for both Dora and Des, plus scrimping and scraping on household costs. But the children had made their way through university to emerge debt-free, with a solid understanding of the value of money, to take up their respective careers. How would we all have managed without that parental support, both moral and financial, Dora wondered. She didn’t approve of the road Magdalena had taken, and the situation she found herself in couldn’t have been so bad as to send her down it so soon in life.

She found herself wanting further understanding. Hearing the girl’s story might help to awaken the sympathy so far lacking in Dora. ‘How did you manage to get to university? It must have been difficult, given that you were taught at home.’

‘I was helped by a librarian, but it’s a bit complicated and I don’t want to bore you.’

‘Oh no, I wouldn’t be bored. I’d like to hear, and I’ve got the time.’

‘Well then.’ Dora helped prop her up on the pillows for comfort. ‘My father included literature in what he taught me, although only those books he thought suitable, which weren’t many. It was on condition that I accepted his warning and not get carried away by it, because it was all fiction. I agreed, because I enjoyed study, and not only because I’d little else to occupy me. I wanted to find out as much about the world as I could, and a greater experience of this when I was grown and away from my parents would prove or disprove his ideas, I thought.

‘I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or use a computer, and we didn’t possess those anyway. In line with my parents’ views, books were about all that was available to me. They accepted that I needed to get out sometimes, and the public library they felt to be safe, relatively-speaking. I was taken there on weekdays, while other children were in school. It was quieter then, and the librarians agreed to keep an eye on me, as long as I was no trouble. They soon found that I wasn’t.

‘I’d stay and read for a couple of hours before one of my parents collected me, and I read as many books as I could, after my father had vetted them first. The fact was though that I read much of which he didn’t approve. Being a child, inquisitive and alone, I found other books and, having glanced through them, I started to read them. I couldn’t take them home, so I hid them behind or on top of the bookshelves, where others couldn’t find them and borrow them, so that I could continue with them next time.

‘A librarian discovered me one day and asked why I was doing this. Because I’m not allowed to take it home. My parents don’t approve of many of the books in here.

‘She examined the text in her hand with surprise. I suppose she thought it harmless for a child of my age. She looked at me and the plea in my eyes, before deciding that I needed encouragement, I suppose.

Here’s what we’ll do. You give me the book you’re reading when you finish each day, and I’ll keep it under the desk for you. You can ask me for it the next time you’re in. As long as you don’t take too long to read the books, I can’t keep them for you indefinitely.

‘I assured her I wouldn’t. I devoured them, and the knowledge contained within them, which seemed a window onto the wider world. I must’ve been an odd sight, perched at the library table, reading with an avid intent. A child with shorter-than-short white-blonde hair, and only the dress I wore to identify me as female.

‘To discourage the sin of vanity in me, you see, my hair, which was considered beautiful, was shorn by my mother, with the proverbial basin over my head. It had the opposite effect, though, because after she allowed me to grow it again—when I was eleven or twelve years old, and judged on the verge of puberty, the time to attract a potential husband—I never had it cut, ever, apart from an occasional trim to keep it neat. And look at me now.’

Her expression was rueful, and Dora made sympathetic noises over the brutal hair loss brought about by chemoradiation therapy.

‘Over time my arrangement with Mrs Cardinal, the librarian, grew to include her colleagues, so I was always assured of continuing books where I’d left off. That’s how she came to be my accomplice in getting to university.

‘I showed so much promise in my studies, as well as discrimination in what I read—as he thought—that my father allowed me to study as a private candidate for GCSEs and A levels, in subjects of which he approved, of course. I realised later it was only meant to keep me busy—because I couldn’t spend all day doing housework with my mother—until such time as they found me a husband.

‘I sat the exams at a college approved by the examination board. My grades were good, over and above what I needed to get into university, but my parents refused to let me apply. When I told Mrs Cardinal she obtained the correct UCAS forms and helped me complete and submit them. I was no longer a child, she said, and it was my right to choose my own future. I received more than one offer of a place to study English and European Literature, but I had to fight for the right to accept one of them, because my parents weren’t happy that I’d applied behind their backs and opposed the idea more than ever.’

Her face contracted with pain. ‘Could you please?’ She indicated a need to Dora, who realised with shame that in listening to the story she’d been neglecting her duties to the patient telling it. She hastened to provide what was needed and, when the girl was more comfortable, said goodbye for the night. She was off home to Des, and a late supper, and didn’t want to keep him waiting.

Magdalena smiled, in a light-headed way brought on by the administration of morphine. ‘Of course, you mustn’t be late. Thank you for everything, and for listening. It’s been interesting, looking back.’

Well, you don’t have much to look forward to, Dora thought as she let herself out, and then reproached herself. Of course the girl did, her sins would be forgiven, if she was repentant, which Dora was sure she was, but of what, exactly? She resolved to find out.

2: BEGINNING

Arriving at her usual early-evening time the next day, she found her patient sitting with the cleaner, named Celia, and laughing over a joke which the older woman was finishing. Dora took silent umbrage, hearing enough to gather that it included bad language and was told at the expense of nuns. In her opinion religion was not suitable material for coarse humour.

Celia left the room, and Dora gave her a tight smile through partly-pursed lips, receiving in return a knowing grin which she interpreted as the woman reading her thoughts and mocking them. Magdalena noticed it all, and hastened to appease her nurse.

‘Please don’t be offended. Celia was raised as a Catholic but had a rough time when she was young and lost her belief because the Church didn’t help her. She’s bitter about that, so it makes her feel better to poke fun at it. I understand, because I lost my faith too.’

‘How did that happen?’ As Dora went about making her comfortable the girl told her.

‘I suppose my relationship with religion was on the wane before I arrived at university, but the thing that finished it happened not long after I got there. A girl in one of my seminar groups asked everyone if we’d like to go to a special Sunday- evening service at her church, about three miles from campus.

‘Some old habits die hard, and she’d got a car and offered to take me and bring me back, as I was the only one to accept her offer. I went with her, but it turned out she had a boyfriend there, and he’d got other ideas for the evening after the service. She disappeared with him, and so did the lift back she’d promised me. I’d insufficient money for bus fare, even had there been any buses on a Sunday night, and no other members of the congregation would go out of their way to give me a lift and see me back in safety, despite the minister telling them of my problem. I made an ironic comment that I supposed Jesus was walking me home—which they found very witty—and I walked back in the dark and the rain. Maybe he did walk with me, because I got back okay, but I learned that there’s a difference between a Christian and a Churchgoer, and the knowledge put paid to my already-damaged faith.’

Dora conceded that the girl had a point. Some people attended church but didn’t seem to apply its teachings to their own lives. It was obvious that it wasn’t this incident alone which had caused her patient to lose faith though.

‘How was your faith damaged before?’

‘Part of the problem was what my parents and their beliefs deemed suitable for a girl. A Victorian angel-in-the-house doctrine it was, housekeeping and making a safe haven from the world without for the menfolk within, or one man, a husband, to be precise.

‘I wasn’t opposed to the idea of marriage, but I thought I ought to have a say about who I married, and when, if I did at all. I wanted to experience more of the world first. It should be my choice, and I believed university would help me, although my parents didn’t agree. We reached an impasse when the issue became critical, because a young man came to my parents’ notice.

‘He was the son of members of their church, about the same age as me, and on those grounds considered a suitable potential husband. We saw each other at the church, and at the youth group gatherings, but now they gave us an extra degree of freedom, to get to know each other better. We got on well, there was attraction on both sides, and things got physical, unbeknown to our parents.

‘I realised later that what went on between us was normal for inquisitive teenagers, but I knew little if anything about sex back then. My parents had fudged the issue, teaching me that intimate behaviour’—she put little quotation marks around the words with her fingers—‘was to be avoided until I was married, but they didn’t tell me what that was, exactly.

‘The boy and I went too far, or so he told me, and that I could be pregnant. Guilt-fuelled panic set in, but I was lucky and my period started a few days later. I was confused by it all, especially by the sex, which had been disappointing and seemed very little, given the fuss that’s made about it. Paranoia set in after another incident seemed to prove that I had indeed committed a grave sin.’

Dora remembered the times she’d spent with Des at the youth group, and afterwards, when he’d walked her home and kissed her, suggesting other things they could do if she cared to go somewhere more private with him. She’d cared, and was tempted, but resisted because she’d been informed in detail about the facts of life by her midwife-mother, and knew what she should and shouldn’t do before marriage.

This girl had been left ignorant, and lacked school friends to bring her up to speed, children having a way of finding things out before they were supposed to. In which case, what else could be expected? It seemed that whatever did happen had left Magdalena cold, where even Dora of the low libido had experienced almost irresistible sensations when Des kissed and caressed her.

‘We had a social day for young people at the church community centre.’ Magdalena smiled at the memory. ‘We played a sort of piggy in the middle game, sitting in a circle with one person blindfolded in the centre. We were each given a card with the name of a railway station on it. The youth leader would call out, for example Derby change with Exeter, and those two ran across the circle to change places without getting caught by It. Whoever did would become the new It, and the previous one would take their card and play as that station.

‘It was simple enough, until I got my station name, which was Maidenhead, of all things. I panicked, but tried to appear cool. I knew God was on to me, pointing the finger of irony at me as a fallen woman. Guilty, unless I married the boy responsible, who I knew was willing.

‘My rebellious and independent streak asserted itself though. I didn’t want to get married, not yet, maybe never, to him or anyone else. My parents tried to force the issue, even though they didn’t know of our experiments with sex. I suppose I still resent them, because if they’d told me the facts of life and I’d known what to expect I would’ve realised that nothing much had happened and I wouldn’t have worried about it. Maybe I wouldn’t have seen myself as fallen and got into the situation that shaped my life and took me down the path I’ve been on since. But that’ll have to wait for next time.’

A knock at the door announced Laura, the lecturer-householder, with a cup of tea and a question as to whether Mags could manage to eat anything. Dora realised she was over her time and needed to get moving. She carried out the necessary tasks for her patient and left the two women together, wondering about their relationship as she drove through the late-evening traffic.

She’d noted the affectionate diminutive version of the girl’s name which the older woman had used. Mags, she’d called her. Were they mother and daughter? Laura was old enough to make that feasible, she had to be in her late fifties at least, or even her sixties.

Dora dismissed the idea. Laura didn’t fit the picture of the old-fashioned and strict religious mother Mags had painted. If she was that person she wouldn’t have her fallen daughter back living with her. Not that Mags had said a lot about her mother, whose life appeared dedicated to serving the father, which wasn’t the impression Laura gave, even if the father was around, which he wasn’t.

They weren’t linked by blood then, unless Mags had other relatives she hadn’t mentioned, but Dora didn’t think so. It was the oddest household, all-female, four, maybe five, generations. She resolved to find out what linked them all, with as much tact as possible.

3: ARRIVING

She got the opportunity the following evening, when Laura let her in and ushered her into the kitchen for a quick word.

‘She’s been a bit low this afternoon.’ Dora accepted the tea which Laura offered. ‘Old memories, you know. I don’t understand what’s getting her down, some things she’s told me but a lot she hasn’t. I’ve been trying to talk about positive things and maybe you could do the same.’ She took two mugs herself and indicated the third. ‘Could you please?’ She preceded the nurse to the girl’s room, and Dora couldn’t resist fishing.

‘I know how difficult it must be, believe me, for a mother to see her child suffering.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not her mother, I never had children. My ex-partner wanted one, but I was so busy looking after my own mother, when I wasn’t working, that I didn’t think it’d be fair to the child. By the time my mother passed away, though, Yvonne was tired of waiting, and she left me.’ She moved down the hallway with a regretful sigh, Dora following.

So her attempt to learn the nature of the relationship between Mags and Laura had disclosed other information which left her mind reeling. A lesbian. Dora wasn’t ready for that, and didn’t approve, even before considering the other option, that these two could be lovers. This seemed confirmed as she followed Laura into the room where the dozing Mags opened her eyes and then her arms, into which Laura went after depositing the mugs on the bedside table. Their affectionate hug had the effect of softening even Dora’s disapproval.

‘I’m sorry to be such a misery. I’m feeling a bit better now, I’ll try to be happier.’ Mags managed a weak smile.

‘Don’t apologise, we all have down days and you’ve every right.’ Laura hugged her closer.

Dora excused herself to visit the bathroom, as she’d been stuck in traffic for longer than was ideal on the drive in. As she washed her hands she considered these two as a lesbian couple. She’d heard something once, some gossip in a staff room maybe, of prostitutes turning to other women, in disgust at what they’d experienced from men. Only natural, when you think about it, the informant had said, but there was little less natural, as far as Dora was concerned. The affection between these two was touching, but anything more—she prevented her thoughts from going down that route as she re-entered the bedroom.

‘She’s all yours.’ Laura took her tea and left nurse and patient together.

Dora couldn’t resist the urge to continue probing, as she went about her duties. ‘It’s clear she’s devoted to you.’ She didn’t look at Mags but focused on the task in hand. ‘Have you been together for long?’

‘Oh, no, I’ve only lived here since I was released because, you know—.’ Dora knew this part of her patient’s history. She’d been in prison, released early on compassionate grounds for her last few months of life. ‘I didn’t know her that well before, I didn’t see her for years, then she came to visit me in prison and offered me a home here until—.’ She trailed off, then collected herself. ‘She was one of my university lecturers, and my personal tutor. She felt responsible for the way my life had gone off the rails, which was silly of her, it was all my own fault.’

Dora was relieved. It was fortunate the