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the gap between his two front teeth.
    He takes his shoes off in the hall. Nobody knows if this is a habit he brings from home or if he thinks it’s expected of him here. It’s a little too intimate, the sight of him padding around in his socks, but nobody dares to say anything for fear of hurting his feelings.
    He’s from Lagos. When Addie asked him whereabouts he was from in Nigeria, he seemed baffled by the question. I am from Lagos, he said, as if there were nowhere else you could be from. He told them he was a nurse back home and they took him at face value. There was no way of checking.
    He can be quite chatty when he’s on his own with the patient. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that he’s so intensely disliked. Or maybe he doesn’t care. When Addie shows up he goes silent.
    He’s punctual. He arrives every morning on the stroke of eight. Addie hears him ring the doorbell before he opens it with his own key. He embarks cheerfully on his morning routine, a series of duties that has been painfully negotiated down to the very last detail.
    “He can unbutton my pajama top for me but I’ll take it off myself. He can turn on the bathwater but he’ll have to wait outside until I’m finished. He can pass me the towel but I insist on drying myself.”
    Was it Della who said it was like dealing with a particularly demanding movie star?
    Once Hopewell has guided him through what he refers to as his “ablutions,” he helps him into clean underwear and a fresh pair of pajamas. Then he assists him in putting on his clothes on top of the pajamas. It’s an eccentric scheme, but it seems to be working. He wears his normal clothes on the top half, tracksuit pants on the bottom. A hideous indignity, but one that’s unavoidable if he wants to be able to go to the toilet by himself.
    Addie checks on him after breakfast. She collects the newspaper from the floor in the hall and brings it in to him, laying it out flat on the desk so he can scan the front page. Sometimes they have coffee together. Later in the day, Mrs. Dunphy comes. Before the accident, he only needed her for a few hours a week, but now she comes every day. She does his shopping for him, posts any letters that need posting. She puts on a wash, does some ironing. Before she leaves, she makes lunch, serving it up to him on a tray at his desk. He looks out the window as he’s eating.
    “I could get used to this, Mrs. Dunphy,” he says, without turning round. This is his idea of trying to be nice. But it’s too late in their relationship for that now. She sticks her tongue out at him as she backs out of the room.
    Come evening time, Addie arrives with the ingredients for dinner. Usually some kind of ready-made meal for two that she can throw into the oven, serve up on heated plates, and pass off as home cooking.
    While the food is warming she helps him to get undressed, insofar as he will allow her to. She unlaces his shoes so he can kick them off. She helps him pull his jumper over his head, trying not to knock his glasses off while she’s doing it. She unbuttons his shirt, but he manages to step out of his tracksuit bottoms by himself. As if by magic, he’s back in his pajamas again, his modesty undisturbed.
    He climbs into bed as Addie lights the fire and gets the DVD lined up. When she has his clothes folded and draped over a chair, she goes to fetch the drinks. A glass of red wine for herself and three fingers of Tyrconnell for him. He has a cupboard bursting with unopened bottles of whiskey, all gifts from grateful patients.
    Addie pours the whiskey into a cut-glass tumbler and drops a plastic straw into the glass. Given no other option, he has quickly come to terms with the notion of sipping whiskey through a straw.
    They’ve been working their way through a Bette Davis box set. Already they’ve watched Now, Voyager and In This Our Life .
    “What about we throw on The Old Maid tonight?” she asks.
    “Is that not a bit close to the