It was not shaping up to be a good day. It promised, instead, to be the type that felt like a long-haul journey, only endured because there was little choice but to push forwards, gritty-eyed and marrow-weary. The nature of this particular day had been set in motion shortly after five that morning, when Shirley Conifer had been woken, as usual, by her bladder. What was not usual however, was that on her way back to bed and another hour of blessed sleep, she had tripped on the passage runner in the darkness and face-planted into the doorjamb. That final vital hour had instead been spent staring at the slowly lightening ceiling, with her forehead throbbing in a steady rhythm that matched her husband’s snores.

At six o’clock she gave up, swallowing enough paracetamol to make her also feel nauseous. She sat down at the table with her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, gazing fixedly at the opposite wall. Unfortunately, there was a mirror there, the view doing little to improve her mood. Could the lump in the centre of her brow possibly grow any larger? And when had her cheeks become jowls? When had her neck developed the ability to pleat? Was that her scalp she could see through the tundra-like tufts of her hair? Only the other day she had joked to an older friend about seventy being the new fifty. No, no it wasn’t. Seventy was this. Which was particularly upsetting as she herself wasn’t seventy yet. Not for another decade…

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