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“You sound awful. I’m coming over,” she said, brushing aside my halfhearted protests.

The truth is, I was relieved to know she was on her way. And very glad that it was Angela who was coming.

“You look ghastly,” Angela said when she arrived, skipping any polite pretense about my appearance. Ordinarily, I considered such things important—keeping up appearances, no matter how difficult, affecting an attitude of self-sufficiency, not letting on when I was feeling ill, etc., etc., etc. But when the body fails as mine had, regression seizes the opportunity it’s been waiting for: to push aside the adult and let the child—in my case the sick child—take over. I yielded to Angela’s ministrations.

To my surprise, she knew her way around a sickroom. She took my temperature—“Up, but not too bad,” she said, dispensing a dose of aspirin—then moved me to the other twin bed while she changed the sheets. Then she handed me fresh night clothes and a cool washcloth, crushed some ice, pouring it over the Coke syrup she’d brought with her, darkened the room and, finally, checked the medicine cabinet and pantry to see what was there.

“I’m calling Victoria to bring over some things from the chemist and the grocer. You should try to get some sleep,” Angela said. She left the bedroom, leaving the door behind her slightly ajar. Exhausted by the morning’s activities I quickly dozed off.

I awoke to the low, musical sound of women’s voices in the living room. As I listened through the half-open door to the soft, blurred conversation, its slow cadences as reassuring to me as a cool hand on my brow, I thought of Mother and Grandmother, talking at night on the porch just beneath my window. I looked at the clock; a little after one in the afternoon. I checked myself out by trying to sit up in bed. But even raising my head required more energy than I had. It also produced a wave of dizziness that sent me scurrying back to my pillow.

“Ah, I see you’re awake,” a cheery voice said from the door. It was Victoria. Angela stood behind her. “How do you feel?”

“Like a cat on a hot tin roof,” I said, without the slightest clue as to what in the world prompted such a totally inept description of my physical state.

“Can you drink some tea?” Angela asked. “Maybe eat a dry biscuit or two?” I said I’d try.

A tea tray was brought in and the two women sat on the bed opposite mine, pouring tea and offering sympathy.

They stayed most of the afternoon, seeing to it that I drank fluids, took aspirin, and rested.

“Sarah will pop in tonight with some soup,” Victoria said as they were leaving. “And we’ll see you tomorrow.”

Over the next few days, a three-shift schedule went into action. Someone on duty in the morning, usually Victoria; then Sarah in the afternoon; and in the evening, Angela. Each woman stayed for an hour or two, and each had her own approach to the task at hand.

Victoria arrived bearing two or three newspapers, from which she would read aloud after fixing me tea and toast. Sarah brought flowers and wholesome things to eat such as chicken-and-rice soup and delicate puddings. She also brought flowers and watched television with me. We particularly enjoyed a show called The House of Eliott, a story of two sisters who become fashionable London dressmakers in the 1920s.

But it was Angela’s evening visits that I looked forward to most. What Angela brought was: herself.

Like Scheherazade, she told me stories; tales about her life as an only child and as a slightly reckless young woman who longed to be an actress. She told me of her first marriage to a barrister, a happy union that produced a son; and of her second one to an aging actor she’d met while living for a year in Italy. She talked of her son, of their closeness, even though he lived in an isolated part of Wales. And she talked of what she wanted in the years ahead: “The life I have now, plus my health,” she said. “And maybe one grand surprise every year or so.”

On one such evening Angela brought me a book titled The Journey’s Echo. “It’s a selection of travel writings