#8 Ina McGuire

“Do your worst.” That’s what I told the council. End of the day they can’t prove a thing, not now Sheila’s away. Oh, they act all high and mighty with their meetings and their community policemen and law this, rule that. But the bottom line is they just don’t know. They don’t know the bond you can form with someone when you care for them every day. How someone can come to rely on you.

I’m not saying I don’t know what it looked like. But Sheila wanted me to have her jewellery. No one can say she didn’t. I mean, she never actually said so in words, but she wouldn’t have grudged me. Payment for all those hours. All the hours of my life, helping people exist. Not to live, just to linger. Sheila knew how that felt, working away your own life tending to the coffin dodgers, trapped in the purgatory of their sad, broken bodies. I told her often enough. And what use is it all to her now anyway?

So “do your worst”, that’s what I say. That Little Miss Perfect from the social works wants to accuse me? Let her mop up an 85-year-old's shit. Then I’ll talk to her.