Forty-Six Degrees

The car says 46 on the dash and Leah doesn't believe it, and then she gets out and believes it. The air isn't air. It's something you push through. Mrs Kowalski's flat is on the second floor of a block with no lift and brick walls that have been drinking sun since six a.m. Leah knocks. Nothing. Knocks again, calls out. There's a shuffle, a chain, a face in the gap. "I said I'm fine, love." "I know you did. Can I come in anyway? I've got your tablets." She doesn't have the tablets, or she does, but that's not why she's here. She's here because the heat plan says every client over eighty on the list gets a visit on a day like this, and because Mrs K's daughter in Perth rang the office twice, and because Leah's been doing this eleven years and can hear something in "I'm fine" that isn't. The flat is hotter than outside. That's the thing people don't understand. A brick box with the sun on it is an oven, and the one fan is pushing hot air around the room like a spoon in soup. Mrs K is in a cardigan. "Aren't you warm?" "I'm always cold. It's my age." Leah takes her wrist. Pulse is fast and thready. Skin dry. Not sweating, which is wrong, you should be sweating in this. Tongue like felt. "When did you last have a drink?" "I had a tea." "When?" A pause that's too long. Leah does the things. She's done them a hundred times this week. Water, small sips, not too fast. Wet flannel on the back of the neck, the wrists, the insides of the elbows. Cardigan off, which takes negotiation. She wedges the bedroom door open and drags the fan so it pulls from the shaded side. She fills a bowl with the ice she brought in the esky and sets it in front of the fan, an old trick, works better than it should. "There's a cool centre at the library," she says. "Aircon. Cold drinks. I can drive you." "I'm not sitting in a library with strangers."

"They've got the crime novels." Mrs K looks at her sideways. "The Rankin?" "All of them." It's 38 in the flat when they leave. Leah knows because she's got a thermometer she bought herself, not issued, and she writes it down in the notes with a little asterisk, the way she's been writing them all week, a row of asterisks that someone at the office is going to look at eventually or isn't. In the car, aircon roaring, Mrs K sits with her handbag on her lap and says, "It never used to get like this." "No." "We had hot days. But not like this. Not for a week." "No." "My husband would have said it's just weather." Leah takes the turn onto Grange Road. There's a heat shimmer over the tarmac like the road is thinking about something. "What would you say?" Mrs K doesn't answer for a while. Then: "I'd say I'm eighty-four and I'd like the Rankin, please." At the library there's a woman on the door with a clipboard and a cold bottle of water, and inside it's 22 degrees and there are about forty people in armchairs not talking to each other, and Mrs K takes a seat by the window with her book and her handbag and gives Leah a nod that means go on, off you go, I'm fine. This time it's probably true. Leah has six more on the list.