‘Maybe I’m mad.’

Julia Branson looks up from making Mr Childe’s bed.

‘You’re not mad, Mr Childe,’ she says, hoping that he can’t hear the tiredness in her cracked voice. She has worked through the night and is in the last few minutes of her shift; soon she can go home and sleep. Sleep. The thought of her bed makes her body ache with longing.

The old man is sitting in his chair beside the window, looking out at the world that’s all but forgotten him. He is in this same position everytime that she comes into his room and the uniformity is disquieting. That nothing should change from one week to the next fills Julia with a deep sadness and sense of futility. And then she berates herself for being so self-centred. What does it matter what she feels?

She finishes making his bed in silence, then crosses the room to stand in front of Mr Childe. Like so much else, his hearing has deteriorated over time and he has come to rely heavily on lip-reading.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asks, enunciating her words with precision.

He peers at her, eyes narrowed, as if she is somewhere far in the distance and he’s trying to focus. She steels herself for what she knows will come next.

‘Who are you?’ he asks.

His hands are linked in his lap, his thumbs slowly circling one another.

Julia tucks her hair behind her ears and smiles faintly.

‘You know me, Mr Childe,’ she says. ‘I’m Julia. I work here. You know me.’

He continues to stare at her, his watery blue eyes void of recognition. His lips tighten and a frown creases his brow. He is getting agitated, Julia thinks. After working with him this long, she can tell the signs. This isn’t one of his better days. He is disappearing before her.

‘Where’s Daniel?’ he asks. ‘I want to see Daniel.’

His voice is more confident this time, full of the certainty that’s reserved for any mention of his son.

‘Daniel is in America,’ Julia says, adding, ‘he was here at Christmas.’

For all of five minutes, she thinks. Just long enough to ease his conscience. Though she had met Daniel Childe in such short space of time, Julia had taken an instantaneous dislike to his suave, slick manner. He’d spent more time on his Blackberry than he had talking to his father.

Mr Childe turns back to the window. It’s a bright summer’s morning outside and the sky is a cloudless blue.

‘Do you think I’ll go for a walk today?’ he asks.

‘Would you like to?’

‘I think I would.’

Julia checks her watch. Her shift is over, but she has nothing to rush home for. There is no boyfriend, no husband, no children any more. At least here in the home she is needed; at least here her time seems spent for some benefit.

‘Come on then,’ she says.

Mr Childe clambers slowly out of his chair and Julia keeps her hand lightly pressed under his arm. She has learnt that, like so many men she’s met, he can’t acknowledge his need for help or support. And yet this doesn’t anger her in the way it would a man her own age. Instead it fills her with pity.

They make their way downstairs in the lift and step outside into the warm summer morning.

When Mr Childe offers his arm for Julia to take, she does so and they walk arm in arm down the gravelled path beside the nursing home.

‘Did I ever tell you how I met my wife?’ he asks.

‘I don’t think you did,’ Julia lies. ‘Tell me.’

A smile lifts Mr Childe’s for just a moment before he snatches his arm back.

Panic freezes his face as he looks Julia in the eye.

‘Who are you?’