He has been doing that since about 2016. We just called it being a surgeon.
Esme.
She is nine.
She was told in the November, by both of us, in the front room, that Daddy had stopped being a surgeon and was doing a different job at the hospital and that he had been sad about it.
She said: "Is that why he's been weird?"
Nine years old.
And then she asked whether he still had the blue hat, which is a theatre cap he brought home when she was about four and which she has worn for dressing up since.
And he said yes, it is in the drawer.
And she said: "Can I keep it then?"
And he said yes.
That is the entire extent of what that child has required from any of this, and we had been preparing for a fortnight.
And Pauline, who is seventy and who runs the volunteers, and who I went to see in the January.
