Fiscal Confidence Sister Saleem blew in on an east wind. Her little yellow Daf stalled on the cattle grid because she’d had no experience of cattle grids and imagined it best to slow right down instead of speeding right up. None of us knew who she was or why she had come because the owner had forgotten to mention it, and his forgetting—and Matron forgetting as well, or not having been told—was all the more reason to celebrate her arrival. Sister Saleem didn’t seem to mind having been forgotten, she just struggled along the narrow corridor with two suitcases, bumping the old paintwork, and a basket of fruit that her ex-colleagues had presented her with as a good-luck gift. She was all smiles and sweat patches. She’d come to make everything all right, but I was the only one who seemed to understand that then. I began the introductions in the kitchen as if I were the oldest person there—everyone else was rendered speechless by her medical trouser suit (pale jade tunic and kick-slacks), her massive hair and the very fact of her.
