I know the proposed flat's floor plan better than I know its maintenance charges. This is not my usual standard of evidence. I keep imagining the morning light and my own quiet kitchen, then postponing the less attractive enquiry about repairs, travel time and what the monthly amount would leave me. Independence will still involve a bus timetable. I have made a list of the costs I have not verified and asked my sister to look at it before I speak to anyone selling the place. She says I am allowed to want something before proving it sensible. I agree in principle. In practice I would like the sensible part to stop moving every time I calculate it.

During the recess I stretched my wrists as usual, then realised I had been pressing my right shoulder upward against the cold air for most of the morning. The hands receive careful maintenance while the rest of me is expected to cooperate without complaint. On the bus I put the phone away for a few stops, partly to rest my fingers and partly because holding it had become one more fixed position. By the jetty walk my shoulder had lowered itself. I had no grand feeling of exercise accomplished, only the pleasant discovery that I could turn my head without first moving my whole upper body. At dinner my fingers started tapping on the table again. Appa noticed before I did.

One of the juniors brought me a page she had managed without losing the thread of the testimony. She was so pleased that I felt pleased before I had checked a word. I did check it, naturally. There were corrections, but fewer than last week, and she went away smiling. For the rest of the afternoon I felt less invisible than usual, which surprised me. I don't need applause for eleven years of doing my work accurately, or so I have been telling myself. A small, direct thank you is apparently not unwelcome. I mentioned her progress at home and Amma listened without taking the conversation elsewhere. That was a second small pleasure.