see her – or anyone else in the family – they listen, then hit the reset button in their minds as soon as they walk away. The only person who actually gets it is Mel, my sister, but she’s in New York, working her arse off on a secondment. Which reminds me, I must give her a call. WhatsApp is all very well, but it’d be nice to get a shot of her calm, measured approach to life, just to remind me I’m not insane.
‘You’re a social worker,’ I say as I butter a bread roll, then look at her. ‘You chose a job where you see some of the worst things in our community and deal with them on a daily basis.’
‘Yes, but I’m making a difference,’ she says.
I push my chair back in surprise and look at her, both hands pressed against the edge of the table. ‘And I’m not?’
‘Dad still died, didn’t he?’
‘Not because of nurses. He didn’t die because the nurses did something wrong.’
She shakes her head. ‘I just don’t understand how you’d want to spend your life in one of those places.’ She shudders then, and her face drops. ‘Hospitals. They’re like a prison.’
‘It’s nothing like that. We make a difference. That’s why I do it – that’s why I’m doing it. I can’t believe you’d honestly think that.’
‘I’m sorry, Alex,’ she says. She dips her head for a moment and when she looks up at me there are tears shining in her eyes, threatening to spill over and trickle down her cheeks. ‘I just – I go cold thinking about Dad in there. And the doctor telling us there was nothing they could do. And …’
The threatened tears leak out and she dabs at them with a paper napkin, unrolling a knife and fork to get to it, and leaving them lying askew on the table.
‘It’s not a bad job. We’re not in the habit of killing people off.’
‘It just makes me so sad to think of you spending every day somewhere so depressing.’
‘It’s not depressing,’ I say.
I think of the orthopaedic ward where I’d been doing agency work the other day, where three elderly women – all broken hips – were exchanging stories on how they’d got their injuries. Margaret, aged ninety-one, had been halfway up a ladder redecorating her dining room when she’d lost her footing and fallen. They were full of life and laughter and they’d spent the entire day winding me up. I got the usual good-humoured male nurse jokes of course – if I had a tenner for every one of those, I’d be able to retire before I even graduated – but they were a lovely lot. And when a girl of about twenty had turned up – tearful and clearly in a lot of pain – with a badly broken leg from an ice-skating competition, they’d all cheered her up, making jokes across the little four-person side ward. That sort of thing – that’s what makes it worth it.
‘Well,’ says my mother, sounding a bit dubious. ‘As long as you’re happy.’
‘I am,’ I say.
She chats about her pottery class and the outdoor swimming club she’s joined, and I listen and make the right noises. I think if I told her about Margaret and the girls in the orthopaedic ward, she’d probably get it, but I can’t face it. I’m tired of trying to convince people that I’ve done the right thing when there are others out there who don’t need to be told. Look at Jess. She understands. She gave up a good job and stability and all the rest of it to follow her dream of working in publishing. I shake my head and bring my focus back to what my mother’s saying.
‘She’s okay then?’ Mel’s on the phone from New York as I’m sitting on the train back to London, later that evening. She’s about to go into a lunchtime meeting when she takes my call, and I’m trying to keep my voice down and not be one of those wankers making a call at the top of my voice.
‘Yeah, she’s good. I think you’d say she’s keeping busy.’
‘Sounded a bit manic to me.’
‘Nah,’ I say back, even though it’s exactly what I was worried about. ‘She’s fine. Just getting on with stuff.’
‘How about you?’ Mel asks.
‘All right. Tired. Always tired.’
‘Quit moaning,’ Mel says, laughing. ‘You chose this. You could’ve been sitting at a desk between meetings with your feet up, looking out over Manhattan