Eleven pages, over two sittings, with a solicitor present because I was advised to.
And I gave the cleaner’s name in it. And the three dates out of her notebook.
And I insisted — twice, in writing, which is the only time in eight months I have insisted on anything — that both went into the record as written, rather than being summarised as a member of the housekeeping staff raised a concern.
That phrase was in the first draft. I have kept the first draft.
Her name is Rhoswen. It took me eight months to learn it and I learned it on the afternoon she grabbed my arm.
Her name is Rhoswen and she still works that ward.
Five nights a week, same corridor, same trolley.
She would not take one thing from us. I tried four different ways over eleven weeks and the last one embarrassed us both so badly that I have stopped.
What she accepted, in the end, was a lift home one night in the rain. That is it. That is the full extent of what that woman has taken.
The little girl has a new colouring book and a great deal of unearned confidence.
She has been told she is a hero by about eleven adults, including two who were not there.
I think it has gone to her head slightly and I think that is completely fine and I hope it stays there for about forty years.
And Rhoswen said one thing to me in that corridor afterwards, about a week later, that I have not been able to put down.
I had been thanking her.
Badly. At length. In a corridor, holding a coffee I had bought her that she did not want, in the way you do when you are trying to pay somebody back with words because you have nothing else they will accept.
And she let me finish, which took about four minutes and which was more than I deserved.
And then she said: I didn’t help your wife.
And then: I just talked louder.
She said it apologetically. That is the part I have not got over. She said it the way you correct somebody who has got your job title wrong.
Four words, from the only person in that building who did the thing that mattered, apologising for the size of it.
Here is the only thing I have.
Everybody wants this to be about a jar of soil and a little girl and a woman waking up because somebody believed.
That is a lovely story.
