Rust rasps in a rotten drainpipe . . it’s Quint clearing his throat. The room’s about the size of two average bathrooms joined together in an L-shape. The upright is both a kitchenette and the passage leading to the front door — off this there are two other, narrower doors, one opening into a minuscule bedroom, the other out of a tiny toilet. Despite the open window the atmosphere in the cramped space is foetid: stale old-man sweat, a smidgeon of urine, and the composting reek of an un-emptied bin full of food scraps and used tea bags. . not my responsibility — his. Quint clears his throat again, then croaks, I’d oblige, young lady, if it weren’t that I’m gonna give birth soon to this darn shark spirit — up in my pit here. . He pulls at his towelling dressing gown where it’s bunched up under his arm. . see, it’s all swole up. — Genie’s always taken aback by Quint’s sweetly reasonable tone, and his accent. . very posh American. Quint whickers gently to himself: Houhy-hn-hn-mm. . and says: Missus Perkins doesn’t scare me. My ass has been a pincushion since ’45 — there’s nothing she can stick in there hasn’t been stuck already. — This is a long speech for Quint — Genie’s impressed. The old man is usually too shaky to speak at all — many of the residents have the tardive dyskinesia associated with long-term use of anti-psychotics, but all the staff simply call it the shakes, and of all the shakers on Genie’s roster, Quint is the shakiest. She sets the little plastic cup down on the filthy surround of the filthier sink and sighs. The staff call it Lincoln Warehouse: because what they do here is keep the residents — mostly former long-stay mental patients — stacked up in these miserable compartments. It wasn’t what Genie had had in mind when she’d thought about. . the caring professions. Still, what chance did she ever have of a decent job without qualifications? A couple of poxy CSEs don’t count, you stupid little cow . . Mumsie’s death mask spits at Genie from the damp wall of a gloomy half-landing on a staircase that switchbacks down into the cellars of her memory. Beside it hangs Cutty’s death mask — but Hughie’s has fallen off and lies on the scuff ed floorboards. Mumsie’s death mask starts to sing: Stu-pid Jeanie’s got no brai-ns, Soon she won’t ’ave no vei-ns . . Genie rubs the crook of her elbow — she hasn’t stuck a needle in her arm since 25th October 1995 . . and then it was only a jelly some muppet off the estate give me. But the scars are deep and it’s taking a fucking age for the liquorice bootlaces to fade from red to black to brown. She sighs again — and tries again: It’s not just a matter of a depot injection — they won’t let you stay here if you don’t get your act together. Quint whickers again, Houhy — hn — hn— mm. . — He’s biddable enough so long as things are done for him. He sits and he reads, any old paperback will do: a thriller, a Mills & Boon romance or a textbook. Before the new care plans were introduced requiring staff not to care, and she was ticked off for doing it, Genie would stop by the Sue Ryder shop on the Mile End Road before she took the tube and pick up a book for him for a few pence. It amazed her — who’d never got into the habit of reading — how Quint could lose seconds between the lines, turn pages into minutes, interleave chapters with hours, and so fold the whole day into a Maeve Binchy or a Colin Dexter. She’d visit first thing in the morning, and whenever she passed she’d. . pop my head round the door and see him there, in his chair, his heavily hooded eyes roving along the lines as his thin lips moved. She asked him once: Are you saying the words to yourself? But he preferred not to reply. — This was soon after she’d started the job, and everything about work was still a novelty: getting up in the morning, showering, setting off to spend the day somewhere else. . just like any normal. The other staff were mostly Filipinas who laughed behind their hands when they found out Genie had been assigned Quint. The most approachable of them, tubby Marcia, said: He’s a creep, that one — I never seed it, but before they say he put his hands on plenty girls. . grabbed at us — grabbed up us skirts! As she’d said this, Maria’s hands went to the big wooden cross hanging round her neck on a length of dull chain — forsaking it, they went to the pockets of her pale-blue nylon uniform tunic, which were patted down. . to check she ain’t lost her faith. If Quint had perved on the women, it must have been a long time ago — he was very old now, well into ’is eighties, although his exact age was frustratingly absent from his notes, as was a lot of other basic information. Quint had also lost his hair, apart from a tatty fringe left behind on his nape that, before the new care plan, Genie would trim with nail scissors. She washed his juddering torso as welclass="underline" sponging the deep and angry sockets of his neck and collarbone, the slack cordage of his muscles and tendons. . he oughta be dangling off a cross. It awakened in her an odd tenderness — the same combination of protectiveness and anger she felt towards Pippa when she was a toddler. At these times the old man seemed weirdly familiar to her. Poor little sausage, Genie would say as she screwed the sponge into his armpit. His hand flailed, and she felt his timeworn skin. . thin as rice-paper. . snag on his bones. . like it might tear. She stared into his peculiar sea-green eyes and they sucked her down into their depths. Those eyes . . so watery. . but they burn — not with lust, but, she suspected, with memories too traumatic for him to find the words for. And of course Quint seldom spoke anyway — unless it was to thank her with great courtesy for whatever small task she’d done on his behalf. Thank you kindly, ma’am, he’d say — and sometimes he’d struggle to rise from his chair, rocking back and forth so he could make a grab for the Zimmer frame that was inches away. When she’d ask him, What d’you think you’re doing? he’d collapse back, wave his feathery hands and croak out, Door. . Open the door for you, ma’am. It’d become, she thought, a sort of joke between them — although, when she considers it, the joke’s on someone else altogether, because now she’s no longer allowed to give him his medication, Quint, a naked, white blob. . is. . coming out of his shell. Pointing at the cup with the Stelazine in it and the one beside it half full of Chlorpromazine linctus, she chides him, Make sure you get it down you, but she knows: He’ll do nothing of the sort . . Doubtless Missus Perkins, the psychiatric social worker, would have a thing or two to say about that, but Genie. . couldn’t give a shit. So what if the old man didn’t take his medication — so what if he ranted and raved? There was no one to hear him except other ranters and ravers. As for jumping out the window — it was too small and he was too feeble. Besides, Genie had a more positive motivation: as the old man’s mind dried out, snippets of his past were coming to the surface: my ass has been a pincushion since ’45 . . that made her feel. . like we’re related