Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy

on its hinges. There is a terrible echoing click as it closes on its own deadlock, and I recognise the sound as soon as I hear it. It is the sound of a plane door closing without me, ready to taxi down a runway and take off for London. Suddenly I very much doubt I’ll be going to the staff Christmas party, either.
    â€˜Was that the door?’ Mr Moreton says, his eyes fixed on the hills.
    â€˜I’m afraid so.’
    â€˜So we’ll need to find another entrance?’ His carefully combed, side-parted hair and the prickles of white whiskers he’s missed on his face send a piercing, protective ache through me.
    â€˜Yeah. But don’t worry, it’ll be fine. You can take your time now.’
    â€˜Don’t you worry,’ he says. ‘I am.’
    He gives the butt one last regretful glance and throws it onto the path, where I stub it out with my toe.
    â€˜Ready when you are,’ he says.
    I wheel the chair to the far corner of the courtyard and down past the pathology wing, around the corner, skirting rows of garbage skips, and up the path beside accident and emergency. There’s no chance of slipping through unnoticed now; the hospital’s come awake and nurses and doctors are walking in briskly from the staff car park, eyeing us curiously, as I make my way past a locked door and yet another emergency exit, also locked.
    â€˜We’ll have to go in via the front,’ I say to Mr Moreton. ‘There’s no way round it.’
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I’ve been to the front and survived once already.’ I’m laughing as he adds, ‘I’m real sorry, though. You’ll lose your job, won’t you?’
    â€˜I couldn’t care less about the job.’
    â€˜What about you going off to London and all?’
    â€˜I’ll just go a bit later than I planned. It’s not like it’s going anywhere.’
    â€˜Sorry to make you run the gauntlet, though.’
    â€˜Nothing to apologise for,’ I say.
    I’m around the corner now, wheeling the chair on the long sweeping stretch of pavement leading to the black glass doors of the impressive entrance atrium. The two black ash bins stand sentinel at either side, but someone else will be hosing them out this morning.
    â€˜Here we go,’ I whisper, bending to Mr Moreton’s ear. The woody, clean fragrance of his Christmas aftershave makes me want to cry.
    â€˜Eyes front,’ he whispers in return.
    We start up the wide concourse with its landscaped box-hedge border, morning light hitting the tinted glass of the doors and heads turning to us as we approach. Mr Moreton’s shoulders go back and his chin lifts and we’re clipping along now, left right left, there’s no way I’m going to do him the disservice of skulking in, it’s up and over the top for us.
    Down in the kitchen the other cleaners will be pouring their cups of tea out of the urn now, Marie remarking coolly on my absence, and Matron will be waiting for us, I am certain, at the nurses’ station, in the no-man’s-land of the hospital’s thermostatically cool interior, its sterilised world of hard surfaces, wiped clean and blameless. Someone else’s jurisdiction now.
    Mr Moreton feels it, I know he does, because I hear him start humming ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, which dissolves in a hoot of laughter then a coughing fit, and I reach down and grab his frail hand again till it’s over. Then we push on, both of us smothering laughter, and this moment is the one I remember most clearly from the year I turned eighteen: the two of us content, just for this perfect moment, to believe we can go on humming, and that this path before us will stretch on forever.

Tender
    Up in under her arm, that’s where it aches. That’s what worries her. They say the biopsy will be a minor invasive procedure, a couple of stitches at most, but she can’t help