Which is why he writes PAID at the bottom. He is telling the next version of himself that it was done.
ITEM 3a. THE TIN, AND WHAT IS AT THE BOTTOM OF IT.
Underneath the receipts there is a folded sheet of hospital paper from the fourteenth of January, 2026.
It is an appointment letter. Memory clinic, at Welbrook, half past nine on the third of February.
It is not a referral he refused. He went to his doctor himself, in the December of 2025, on his own, without telling anybody.
That is what a man of a hundred does when he notices something is wrong.
The appointment was not kept.
There is nothing in that tin after it and nothing in the house, and when I finally asked him about it in the December of this year, fourteen months on, he said he could not remember whether he went.
He may have gone. There may be a letter somewhere I have not seen.
