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with Pip. ‘You know what, McCabe,’ she said, ‘to be honest, that’s no bad thing.’ Megan sighed. ‘Sometimes being in love is more hassle than it’s worth. Way too costly.’

      Deep down, that’s what Pip had long had a hunch about. ‘You see, for me,’ she said, pouring the last of the second bottle of wine into their glasses, ‘there are nice blokes like good old Mike for every now and then. And in between times,’ she whispered, eyes wide for dramatic effect, ‘there are vibrators.’

      Megan shrieked with laughter. The other diners turned and stared.

      Pip snorted into her wine. Paulo, the young waiter, had eavesdropped the conversation. He decided it prudent and hopefully profitable to present the girls with complimentary Sambucas.

      ‘You get what you settle for,’ Pip murmured softly. It was the early hours of Friday morning when Pip finally decided to go to bed. She’d been sitting up with a bottle of Evian, waiting for her living-room to stop revolving at such an alarming rate. ‘If I settle for anything less, I’ll be the one who pays.’ The revolutions of the room had slowed to approximately three per minute. ‘Anyway, you don’t enter your thirties without a fair weight of baggage from your twenties. And I’m not having someone else’s dumped on me. I’m absolutely not unpacking it for them. I don’t do baggage and that’s that, really. Simple.’ The room was settling nicely into one revolution per minute. ‘Vibrators it is, then.’

      The room is stationary. And silent. The Evian is finished and Pip feels hydrated enough to see what lying down feels like. ‘Friday Friday,’ she says to herself, trying to recall her timetable as she walks through to her bedroom.

       Face painting at Golders Hill Park, lunch-time. Party in Chalk Farm at tea-time.

      You could have a lie-in, Pip.

       Me? God, no. If I have spare time, why on earth fill it with doing nothing? I have loads to do. I can find loads to do.

      Can you face being horizontal?

       Let me see. Not too bad.

      Are you all right in the dark?

       Yes. I’m not afraid of the dark.

      Pip is in bed. Lying still in the dark. She loves her bedroom. No clutter. Walls the colour of oyster mushrooms. Thick curtains the colour of crème caramel and behind them, cream roller blinds at the window the colour of cappuccino froth. She bought the blinds in the Habitat sale; the curtains were a freebie from a set-designer friend of hers. They had been on a BBC costume drama and had required a fair bit of deft needlework from Pip. The blisters and pricked fingertips had been a small price to pay for such hallowed curtains. She laid the carpet herself. It doesn’t quite fit but her strategically placed furniture hides this from view. It looks like sisal but is much kinder to bare feet. The massive rusty stain that enabled Pip to purchase it for less than a quarter of the price is conveniently straddled by her bed. Her bed has a birch, Shaker-style headboard, very simply panelled and beautifully made. She picked that up for next to nothing as it had a split right through it. But she worked with wood filler and sandpaper and stain; it took her a month, but now you can’t see the join.

      However, what she loves most of all about her bedroom is something she had to pay full price for – indeed, over the odds – and that is the remarkable quiet considering her flat’s proximity to Kentish Town Road. This had cost her the asking price for the flat two years ago. Though most of her pennies go straight towards the mortgage and Camden Council’s absurdly high council tax, she doesn’t begrudge a penny. It might be a small space subdivided by stud walls, but it is her own place, her haven, and she loves it.

      Pip submits herself to the stillness and silence and stares upwards to where the ceiling ought to be though she can’t determine its surface in the darkness. She tells herself it is now Friday, that Thursday was indeed yesterday. But in effect, it still feels very much Thursday that she is closing her eyes and going to sleep from. Right now, her evening with Megan doesn’t seem as current as the afternoon preceding it. Sure, Megan and she talked about life, love and the universe. And vibrators. But none have the resonance of her afternoon.

      ‘Night-night, little ones,’ she says out loud, ‘see you next week.’

      FIVE

      George Saunders is nine years old. He is into his sixth month on Reynolds, the renal ward at St Beatrix’s, the children’s hospital in the City affectionately known at St Bea’s. He’s uncomfortable and fed up. And now he’s agreed to having his eyes tested because they’re about the only part of him that haven’t been tested. He thinks they’re fine. But he wouldn’t be surprised if they’re poorly. Everything else seems to be.

      ‘Well, here we go, then,’ the doctor says. ‘Cover your left eye – that’s right – what? Yes, I know it’s your left one – I said that’s right, right? Good, use that hand, right? Or that one, left – we’re not testing your hands, are we? Right. Left! Whatever. Ho-hum. Just shut that eye and tell me what’s written on this card.’

      George stares at the card held in front of him.

      i

      ‘i,’ says George.

      The doctor is making those stern contemplative muttering sounds that they are famous for. ‘Right. Now please cover your right eye with the other hand. Lovely. Can you tell me what’s written on this card?’ Another card is held in front of George. He looks at it, then looks at the doctor. He really doesn’t want to smile but invisible magnets haul the corners of his mouth up towards the mobiles dangling from the ward’s ceiling. He reads the card again.

      I

      ‘Um, i,’ he says, stifling a giggle.

      The doctor looks at him sternly. Regards his mother, too. And nods sagely at the ward sister who is hovering. ‘I declare that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with this young man’s “i”s,’ the doctor says. And then the doctor takes out a hammer and starts bashing George’s arms. George giggles as the hammer makes funny beeps and dongs on impact. After all, the tool is made of red and yellow plastic and is light as a feather. ‘Now look what you’ve gone and done!’ the doctor chastises. ‘Nurse! Nurse! Quick, call the doctor! My nose! My nose!’

      The nurse laughs. ‘Incurable!’ she declares and walks away.

      George is smiling widely. The doctor’s nose, bright red at the best of times, is flashing. ‘Quick!’ George is told. ‘Give me your bed and your tubes and those things that do all that bleeping – I need them more than you!’

      ‘Are you coming back next week?’ he asks, very interested in the stickers the doctor has just given him, having magicked them from behind George’s ear.

      The doctor regards the young patient. ‘Yes. I reckon so. Perhaps. If I can switch my nose off.’

      ‘Brill,’ says George. ‘See you then, Dr Pippity. Bye!’

      ‘Good aftermorning,’ says Dr Pippity, clicking her heels together and saluting so clumsily that she clonks herself in the eye. Her nose continues to glow on and off. She points at her gift of stickers: ‘Don’t eat them all at once!’ she declares. She turns from George and walks away, jauntily, with a peculiar skip every step or so. ‘Pippitypippity,’ she mutters as she goes. ‘Pip. Pip. Good aftermorning!’ She settles herself quietly into a chair by the bedside of a small girl who feels too poorly to move, let alone speak. But, in a glance, Dr Pippity clocks a glimmer of welcome in the girl’s eyes. So we’ll leave her sitting there awhile, performing simple and silly tricks. She’s carefully placed a magic wand in the little girl’s hand. It’s one of those trick sticks that segments and collapses. Dr Pippity is feigning frustration with her bedridden assistant. Who, in turn, now has eyes that hint at a sparkle.

      The shift is over. Dr Pippity is exhausted but as she makes her way to the small room she uses to change in, she skips and ‘pip pip’s

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