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A couple of firemen were preparing to seal the door with tape and plastic sheeting, but Jacob asked if he could have a few minutes to gather some things for Nora.

‘Sure, lad,’ the fireman said. ‘We’ll just grab a coffee from that café over the street. We can give you half an hour.’

‘Thanks.’

Nora’s flat was small and cluttered. Two rooms led off the narrow hall where she had fallen, one into a bedroom with a framed assistance bed, another into a small spare room filled with boxes.

A little kitchen diner at the end had a window with a decent view over the hills behind the town, but that was the only good thing about it. The carpet was threadbare, the wallpaper peeling, damp in places.

Jacob took it all in with a sense of regret. While probably bigger than his own tiny flat, it was far shabbier and filled with junk, boxes of old newspapers, heaps of recyclable goods Nora perhaps didn’t know how or when to throw out. On a tabletop was a plastic container with seven lids, each labelled with a different day of the week. Inside each was several different coloured pills, Nora’s medication. Today was Monday, but Monday’s pills remained in the container, and as Jacob rubbed away a layer of dust from the top, he wondered just how long it had been since Nora had taken her medication.

The kitchen was filthy, piles of plates in the sink, some crusted with weeks’ old dirt. Unable to resist the need to clean up, Jacob turned on the tap, only to be met with a weak trickle. Shaking his head, instead he pulled out his camera and began taking pictures of everything, even a few short videos.

Nora had attempted to brighten the mood of the place by placing soft toys everywhere. They lined the kitchen window, sat on three of the four dining chairs. All of them seemed to be dogs, most of them in poor condition. Jacob looked around, searching for Roy, but he was nowhere to be found.

Aware the firemen would be back soon and he had done nothing much but gape and lament, he gathered a plastic bag, took her medicine and then went into the bathroom to collect some toiletries. The bathroom was in as sorry a condition as the kitchen. Giving everything a forlorn stare, Jacob gathered up what toiletries he could find, adding them to the bag, then went into Nora’s bedroom to find her a change of clothes.

Here he found evidence of Clarice Toad’s intervention, a pile of clean, folded clothes on top of a wicker basket at the end of the bed. The bed too, showed signs of having been changed, but the rest of the room was filled with clutter, boxes of old documents, dog-eared books covered in so much dust they most likely hadn’t been read in decades.

Like an oasis among the storm, though, stood a dresser against the wall. Pinned up around it were a number of photographs, some in colour, some black and white. A grainy, sepia picture of a young woman and a smiling man, a little pug on the woman’s lap. Another, a woman who was clearly Nora but at least a decade younger, standing beside the same man, now much older, leaning on a stick. A younger couple and two children sitting in front of them. One further picture: the same man, alone now, cradling the pug, looking down with affection into the dog’s scrunched face.

A handwritten inscription underneath: Bert and Roy, June, 1971.

Jacob looked around. Roy’s pram was near the door, the dog nowhere to be seen. He squatted down, looking under the bed, then beneath the dresser, finally the bed.

The toy dog had fallen down between the headboard and the mattress.

Jacob took him out, giving Roy a brush down. The dog was in terrible condition, a combination of age and overuse. He looked back at the selection of photographs, saw another of the dog in the arms of a baby in the same pram, a younger Nora standing beside it, wearing a beaming smile.

‘You still in there, lad?’

Jacob nearly dropped the dog. He wiped away a tear, stuffed Roy into the bag, and headed for the door.

‘Just coming,’ he said.

The firemen offered to give Jacob a lift, but he had his bike with him, so headed over to the hospital on his own. By the time he made it, Nora had been taken into emergency surgery. At first the doctors were reluctant to talk to him, but one of the paramedics recognised him as the person who had called them, so a doctor came out to the waiting room and took him into a private consultation room.

‘The situation is pretty serious,’ the doctor told him. ‘If you hadn’t found her, there’s a good chance she could have died. As it is, it’s still touch and go.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘We think she had some kind of seizure. Maybe even a stroke. We’ve done some tests, but it was more important to get her stabilised. She’s broken her hip and also fractured a collarbone, both in the fall, which was probably caused by the seizure.’

‘I found some medication in her kitchen,’ Jacob said. ‘I don’t think she’d been taking it.’

‘That would be a great help if you could let me see it,’ the doctor said.

‘Of course.’

‘We really need to get in contact with her next of kin,’ the doctor said. ‘We haven’t got a medical record for her, so we need to know as much about her medical history as possible. Can I leave that up to you?’

‘Uh … yes, of course. I’ll do what I can.’

‘I understand it was an emergency call out,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll put you in contact with the police to have them authorise you to look around the premises.’ He looked down. ‘I understand from the paramedics that the situation in that place was diabolical. If I have my way, heads will roll. That’s no way for someone to live, is it?’

‘With Christmas right around the corner and all,’ Jacob said.

‘There’s a good chance that Mrs. Shapton will celebrate Christmas from her hospital bed,’ the doctor said. ‘That’s if she sees it at all.’