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in again, its head surprisingly grey and its eyes like black beads in the cup of your hands; I have never seen and am unlikely ever again to see a swift so clearly or so close. You carry it up the several flights of stairs till we get to the open-air roof of the building, you go to the very edge of the
roof with it and then I see you throw your arms up and fling the bird into the air.
    For a moment it rose, it opened its wings and held the wind. But then it fell, it was too young, the wind was still too strong for it. We ran down all those stairs as fast as we could and went out into the street to look for it, we looked all up and down the street directly below, but we couldn’t find it. So God knows whether it made it. God knows whether it didn’t.
    Hello? the voice was saying more and more insistent, more and more officious in my ear, hello? but I was looking open-mouthed at the first burst of colour, a coiled whorl of deep pink inches away from my eyes, rich and layered petal after petal in the unfold of petal.
    The scent was, yes, of roses, and look, four new buds round this opened flower had appeared too, I’d not noticed them till now and they looked as if they were really ready to open, about to any minute.
    Yes, I said into the phone. Sorry. Hello.
    Urgency, update, condition? the voice said.
    Fine, I said. Life’s fine. Life has definitely improved.
    Yes, but. Results, hospital, inconclusive, the voice said. Urgent, immediate, straight away.
    The voice had become implacable.
    Surgery policy, the voice said.
    Then it softened.
    Here, it said. Help.
    Well, I said, for now I’m okay though at some point soon I might need a bit of a hand with some trellising.
    With –? the voice said.
    I’m so sorry, I said, but I’m on a train and we may lose reception any mo –
    I pressed the End Call button then switched my phone off because all four of those new buds had opened right before my eyes and I was annoyed that because I had been talking on a phone I had not seen a single one of them do it.
    I have never yet managed to see the moment of the petals of a bud unfurling. I might dedicate the rest of my life to it and might still never see it. No, not might, will: I will dedicate the rest of my life, in which I walk forward into this blossoming. When there’s no blossom I will dead-head and wait. It’ll be back. That’s the nature of things.
    As it is, I am careful when kissing, or when taking anyone in my arms. I warn them about the thorns. I treat myself with care. I guard against pests and frost-damage. I am careful with my roots. I know they need depth and darkness, and any shit that comes my way I know exactly what to do with. I’m composed when it comes to compost.
    Here’s my father, a week before he died. He’s in the hospital bed, hardly conscious. Don’t wake me,
he says, whatever you do. He turns over away from us, his back to us. Then he reaches down into the bed as if he’s adjusting one of the tubes that go in and out of him and, as if there’s nobody here but him – can he really be – the only word for it isn’t an easeful word, it’s the word wanking. Whatever he’s doing under the covers for those few seconds he takes, it makes the word wank beautiful. He’s dying. Death can wait.
    A branch breaks into flower at the right-hand side of my forehead with a vigour that makes me proud.
    Here we all are, small, on the back seat, our father driving, we’re on holiday. There’s a cassette playing: The Spinners; they’re a folk band from TV, they do songs from all over the world. They do a song about a mongoose and a song about the aeroplane that crashed with the Manchester United team on board the time a lot of them died. That’s a modern ballad, our father has told us, and there’s a more traditional ballad on that same cassette too, about two lovers who die young and tragically and are buried next to each other in the same graveyard, that’s the song playing right now in the car in the