Bessie wasn’t sure she understood, but she knew there was no point in washing the blanket herself. Chores finished, she sank down on a couch in the sitting room and then realised that her morning routine had been completely disrupted by events. She hadn’t even turned the ringer on her phone back on. She sighed as she got to her feet again. Her mobile phone was used for emergencies only and was in her handbag, probably switched off. She had a single line into the house, and that phone sat in the kitchen next to the overpriced answering machine that her advocate had nagged her into getting. When she went to bed at night, Bessie always turned the phone’s ringer off. It was a minor concession to her age. She felt she was too old now to be running up and down the stairs in the middle of the night if the phone rang. Any call between nine at night and six or seven the next morning was going to be a wrong number anyway. Bessie’s friends would never bother her at those hours, and she couldn’t imagine any emergency that couldn’t wait until morning.
