… of biscuits, so Alistair was shooting gleefully between the three and his one true love, thrilled at the exciting shift the mud sliding game was taking.

A crisp and efficient voice said “What service please?” “What service please?” Deirdre repeated in her sing song imitation, before Audrey bellowed out “ambulance, ambulance, tell them to send a bloody ambulance” so Deirdre did, “ambulance, ambulance, tell them to send a bloody ambulance”, while she picked at the little bobbles of wool on her ancient purple cardigan. It was her favourite and she knew vaguely that she had knitted it herself, but that was long ago, at school perhaps, or when she worked in the school after Peter died. She couldn’t remember who Peter was though, nor why he had died. Or indeed if he had died. She sighed and just knew she had once liked knitting. Now it was too confusing for her, more knotting than knitting. As she alternated the bobble picking with fondling Alistairs soft little ears, she mimicked the questions coming down the phone, “are you breathing?” “Yes” Audrey bellowed; “are you conscious”; “Yes” Audrey bellowed; “are you in pain” “yes I’m in bloody pain” Audrey bellowed, this last even louder and making her companions jump, including the dogs. Deirdre forgot to listen to the instructions from the ambulance lady watching instead as the little entourage made their hot and grubby way into the kitchen.

Deirdre was still watching and not listening as her parents, the Labrador, Audrey and the walking frame fell foul of the bricks edging the ancient and slightly undulating kitchen floor. A brick floor was a substantial advance in flooring technology in the 1850s, but no one had fully thought through how the floor would fare over the decades. Neither floor nor bricks were even any more and to the floor’s many undulations had recently been added some very deceptive gaps. One such soon claimed a leg of the walker bringing little injured huddle crashing down.

As they went over Audrey let out a loud and agonised cry, that made the lady on the other end of the phone flinch in sympathy. Audrey’s agonised squeal as she flattened the walker brought additional flinching and new urgency to the call. The walker was a buckled mess beneath Audrey now severely bruised and draped painfully over its contorted tangle. Alistair absolutely adored this new chapter and used the human heap as a special training exercise for his future as an SAS rescue dog. Every sorti brought forth new squeaks and groans that added to Alistair’s excitement. Every paw found purchase on soft and bulging and tender flesh. With every jump Audrey squeaked again. It was terrific terrier fun.

At the other end of the telephone, the 999 lady could hear the series of alarming sobs and squeaks. At the sound of the fall she wisely confirmed that “an ambulance is on its way” before Deirdre dropped the telephone and scurried over to the heap to disentangle her frail and crumpled parents from the pile. “Give me the telephone” Audrey sobbed through her agony, wincing in intense pain as she extracted her injured leg from the grimy heap of mangled walker, aged Godparents and dog leads and decrepit Labrador. As she grabbed the phone, Audrey managed a surreptitious swipe at Alistair persuading him to give up his game and wait behind his beloved instead.

Both the lead with a dog attached and the lead without a dog attached had contrived in the way of ropes and wires to become completely entangled with as many ankles, wrists, leads and bits of walker as possible. The drooling Labrador had no choice but to sit as close as he could to his parents, gagging slightly and panting. Unable to move at all, but feeling quite warm, what with all the bodies around them Stephen and Margaret started smiling and then slowly giggling at each other. They were not at all concerned with getting up again. Their bodies hadn’t been so unexpectedly and toasty warmly close in years. The memories of where this might lead was intoxicating, for all its unlikelihood.

Pulling herself with extreme care from the wreckage and leaning against a vegetable rack full of sprouting potatoes and black bananas, Audrey rapidly explained to the ambulance lady that she now might also have a mild concussion and a damaged back as well as a suspected broken ankle and a twisted wrist. The ambulance lady said “I repeat, an ambulance is on its way.” And so it was.

Deirdre managed to get the three of them fully upright and into chairs. She had taken the almost dry kettle off the hob and refilled it and while she waited for it to boil she told them many times, “a cup of tea, that’s what you need, a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit”. She repeated the phrase, one of her favourites because of the biscuit part, until the kettle boiled and she had made the tea, put the teapot on the table along with cups, milk and biscuits. Deirdre was unaware that the chocolate digestives were rapidly disintegrating in the dog’s water bowl. Audrey sat damp and dirty staring blankly at the tea and dog biscuits, much deflated. She tried to explain the unscheduled slip that had led to the lethal glissade on the muddy slope.

“I fell. I fell trying to get back up your bloody bank. Alistair was charging forwards but this bloody lump of a Lab couldn’t get the momentum going to get up the slope. I tried to pull him, then Alistair came back down to help, and I slipped trying to turn and over I went, pulled in two directions and then none, no balance and the mud like black ice.” She sniffed her self-pity. They vaguely got it. Later when all this was over and far away, Audrey explained more calmly that she had almost made it to the top of the bank separating the house and the drive from the lower lawns and the river. As she was about to take her final step onto level ground, the Lab had stopped and her downhill foot slipped forcing her forwards, almost losing her balance. Turning slightly to get upright her slipping foot had slipped further, forcing her backwards and into an unexpected pirouette, that didn’t include much of her right foot. The foot responded with the sound of crunching, hammered honeycomb toffee and Audrey went over. On hands and knees and with the dogs unintended help she eventually managed to drag herself back to the top where she called and called. No one, not even the person disappearing out towards the lane, had heard her.