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pretend to be hungry when she makes my breakfast later. (I can tell you, love, because I know you’d never say anything.)
    There are lots of things I can manage one-handed, the kettle and the toaster, and saucepans – you’d be surprised what you can do when you have to. But tin openers are impossible, and peeling potatoes. Often I get Kirsty to peel me some veg for my tea when she’s there in the morning, and she’ll leave them in a plastic bag in the fridge. Or else I’ve started to buy those bags ready peeled and chopped from the chill section in the Co-op. There was a man on the television saying how bad they are for the environment – all that packaging and whatnot, and I thought to myself, I know someone who wouldn’t approve, then. But I think you’ll forgive your old one-armed gran, won’t you? Anyway, as far as cooking tea goes, I often don’t want so much these days – it’s getting older, and not being able to get out and about to work up an appetite, I suppose. And having two breakfasts most days helps too!
    I hope school is still going well. Do you still take the children out on nature rambles when the weather warms up? I used to love nature rambles more than anything when I was at school.
    What’s ‘The West Wing’, by the way? Is it something I should watch, do you think? Would I understand it? I am so grateful that you started me off watching ‘Friends’. I used to really look forward to my Friday evenings, and I was so pleased when Rachel decided not to go to Paris in the end. She and Ross make such a lovely couple, don’t they?
    Love from your Gran xx
     
     
    From: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent: 1/3/05 02:49
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
     
    Dear Becs,
    I’ve just got back from my first call-out on the Witch House emergency rota, and I know we are meant to be hot on confidentiality, but you live miles away, and I’ve got to tell someone. It was Helen, she’s one of the younger residents, nineteen I found out tonight, though I’d have guessed much younger to look at her, she’s dead skinny and really sort of fragile-looking. She sounded really weird on the phone, said she’d taken an overdose, so I just phoned Alison first (because she’s said she’ll go with me the first time or so) and then got straight on my bike. The house is only five minutes away.
    When I got there Helen was just sitting on her bed, looking sort of dazed. She’d taken a lot of her anti-depressants, plus a few aspirin. She hadn’t taken the whole bottle or anything – she’d been meaning to, she said, but then she’d changed her mind, and stopped and called me. She seemed really scared. I rang for an ambulance, but I hadn’t any idea what to say to Helen, so I just held her hand and hoped Alison wouldn’t be long. Then we heard Alison’s car, and as soon as she got there she took charge. She was super-efficient, just as if this happened all the time (and from what Helen told me later, perhaps it does). She asked exactly what Helen had taken, how many and of what, and wrote it down, and put the bottles and packets in a bag. Then she took Helen into the bathroom and got the toothmug and made her drink about ten mugfuls of water, until she was copiously sick, clumps of undigested tablets all down the sink in this watery vomit. Then we got in the car – Alison phoned to cancel the ambulance, which still hadn’t arrived – and we were at A&E within ten minutes of Alison’s arrival on the scene. Blimey, I wouldn’t want to be her kid’s teacher at a parents’ evening, if she had any kind of bone to pick!
    Mind you, after all that prompt action, of course we then sat there waiting for forty minutes before we got to see a doctor. He gave Helen another emetic and she was sick again (he made her hold a stainless steel bowl, and she had to be sick there with everyone watching), but there was nothing more to come now, so I don’t think it did any good. It seemed to me