When you first meet Jim, he hardly speaks. His room is bare and piled high with boxes. He won’t make eye contact. But after a few months he begins to open up. He tells you where he was born and when he came here. He shows you his DVDs of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Dumbo.
In the office, you can hear hold music from the phone next door. “I got from caller 85 to four,” shouts Faiza, a carer. “And then they hang up on me.” June, another, calls you over: “Flat 5 says he doesn’t want to live. He isn’t leaving his room. He’s urinating in bed. He won’t go to hospital.”
You look at your work phone. Four missed calls from Jim, including a silent two-second message. But he often calls to find out when you’ll be in.
“I don’t know what could make a person want to be like that,” says June.
“Like Flat 5?”
“No, 32. He’s still withdrawing money and throwing it down the toilet.”
Uma asks if you can help set up a bank account for him. June goes back to her morning round of washing, dressing, administering medication.
You look at Jim’s folder, which describes a history of mental illness, self-neglect, unknown voices, refusal of treatment. After a short time in hospital, his social worker recommended that he be moved here. His 52nd birthday is just over a month away. No next of kin is listed anywhere.
In the lounge, Briony’s head droops to one side. The Commonwealth Games is on. You start making cups of tea. The sugar is a solid mass at the bottom of the bowl. You chip off a lumpy spoonful.
Your phone is on speaker, on hold to the Department for Work and Pensions. Briony laughs when you sing along to the hold music. A man informs you that unfortunately the DLA number is separate to the PIP number, though not in all situations.
From the corner of the room Barbara beckons you over, giggling. G.I. Blues is on TV. She points at Elvis Presley and says that’s my boyfriend.
You fold a serviette duck for Terri which collapses immediately. Terri shows you a new glazed pot which says Terri on it. Her mum was also called Terri. Her dad was Tommy. Terri and Tommy. Their picture frame blew over in the wind yesterday, she says. She wants you to wheel her to Poundland to buy a new one.
Janet is yawning as she speaks to you. She’s raised five children, been married twice, had jobs as a hairdresser, cleaner, you name it. Her two husbands died within two years of each other, but she wasn’t bothered. Her daughters took her out for her birthday yesterday. It was a fancy place and they waited a long time to be seated, but the food was good. No, she can’t remember what she had.
You talk with Lisa about eels because she’s reading a book about them.
“You know about the stages?”
They’re born in the Sargasso Sea and start out leaf shaped, floating on the surface of the water, and then become translucent and glassy before entering their mature yellow stage. They can live up to 85 years. In the last year of their lives, wherever they are, no matter how far away, they’ll try to swim back to the Sargasso Sea, growing sexual organs along the way and turning silver. That’s where they mate and die, and then the cycle repeats itself. If they can’t get to the Sargasso Sea, they never reach the silver stage.
Jim is showing off a new plant in his bedroom. It’s on the windowsill next to a money plant and a eucalyptus, both recent purchases too. He has made a chicken-foot broth. You ask how he can eat those wrinkly feet. Jim crunches and sucks the bones in his mouth before spitting the remains onto his palm, smiling.
No next of kin is listed in his file, but he speaks to a sister in Chingford every week. “There’s no number in the file,” Uma told you when you asked about it. “We can’t look on his phone.” So how will his sister know if something happens to him?
Jim’s expression is curious, tortoise-like. He looks at you like a family member he hasn’t seen in a long time. You tell him about today’s bingo prizes: lots of chocolates, two bottles of soap, pot noodles, a reed diffuser. He asks you to fix his laptop, which he uses to watch DVDs. But it needs to be updated and it’s too old to connect to the WiFi. You tell him you’ll take him to the market to get it fixed and you can both get pie and mash afterwards. You put a reminder in your phone for next Wednesday.
Out in the corridor you hold Janet’s hand as you walk her to the lounge. Since losing her sight, Janet has been having visions. “Sometimes they make trees around my bed,” she says, “and they come up close to me all in white, their eyes so big.”
She falls asleep during the film, occasionally waking to wave a pink face towel in front of her.
“Are they here too?” you ask.
“Yes, they’re always here.”
Later that day you run into Jim on the bus home and sit next to him. Both of you are sweating. He comments on your shorts. He has an electric fan from the market on his lap. He tells you about the takeaway restaurant where his parents worked.
“That must be why you like food so much,” you say.
“It’s still growing,” says Jack. You’re standing in the communal garden. “I’m not worried about this climate stuff. We don’t know what the earth has in store for us. There might be graphite or some new thing. It’s growing.”
Jack sits in his wheelchair, smoking under the shade of a big tree. You agree it is hot today.
You encourage Janet to put her body weight on her walking stick as she makes her way along the path rather than carrying it so that its rubber tip hovers a centimetre off the ground.
“Oh, I get it,” says Janet. “My knee doesn’t hurt so much.”
She talks about the green bananas they had in Grenada. She likes being out, even for a moment. Robbie Williams is on the radio, and you and Janet hum along. You expect to see Jim waiting for you in the lounge when you get back.
Inside, you sit with Stephen. It’s the 25th anniversary of “Torn” and Natalie Imbruglia is on This Morning. Stephen keeps pointing at the TV and then at his chest.
“Yes, from in here? Song?”
Tina says “she’s up there you know” while you’re dancing with her. You talk to Bob about Bovril and Camp, his dad’s favourite drink. They’ve changed the logo now, so the Indian is no longer serving the Scottish soldier but sitting with him.
You watch Tipping Point with Terri. Chorlton-cum-Hardy is in Manchester not Newcastle, you say. Terri slurps her tea through a metal straw.
Faiza says they’re all trying to process their grief. Everyone is very sad. Maybe you can plant something in the garden. Elizabeth says she just got chills then, thinking about it.
“It’s like a fucking disco in here,” says Tony, three broken lights flickering behind his head. “I think I’m having another stroke.” There are grumbles about the lift, which has been broken for a week. “Don’t talk to me about the mice,” says Barbara.
June is working on a bank holiday. There aren’t enough staff, not even bank staff. The tender is up for review with the council soon. Uma asks if that’s why they’ve replaced the carpet in the reception. One patch of carpet. You can hear hold music from the phone next door. The housing company can’t be reached. The line is busy. The “whole internet system” is down.
“You heard?” says June. “About Jim. He died on the weekend. I know you liked him.”
Faiza walks in and repeats what June has said. “He was fine the night before, totally fine, and then Elizabeth found him in the morning.”
You ask how it happened. You take Jim’s folder out of the cupboard. No next of kin is listed so Uma has contacted social services instead. The local mental health unit don’t want to have anything to do with it. His case is closed. They’ve locked the door to his flat, and no one is allowed in. So how will his sister know what’s happened to him?
You look at your work phone. Four missed calls from Jim, including a silent two-second message. You listen to it again in case there’s something you’ve missed.
You hear a series of loud thuds at the office window. Briony is waiting outside. She wants a cup of tea, a packet of JPS Players, some Starburst and two rich tea biscuits. You smell the same distinctive mix of bleach, cigarette ash and urine. You see Jim’s face waiting in the lounge.
“Good to see you, love,” says Tina, sitting on her sofa with her hands on her knees. “Sit down.”
“How are you?”
“I found the golden ark,” says Tina, smiling. “I woke up this morning and I thought there it is, but no one will believe me. And then I saw it outside and I said the tide’s on my side.”
You smile and move over to the window.
“You like that,” says Tina.
You look down at the communal garden. Jack is sitting in his wheelchair, smoking under the shade of a big tree. The hedges are overgrown. A fox is curled up by the bins.
“Where is it?” you ask.
Will Harris the author of “Rendang” (2020) and “Brother Poem” (2023)
Follow @FTMag to find out about our latest stories first