Kestrel and peonies across a shoulder and back

The kestrel is back on the lamp post by the staff car park, the one with the bent hood that buzzes when it rains. I saw it at half three from the sluice room window, when the corridor goes so quiet you can hear the saline dripping from the far end. It hung over the tarmac like someone holding a sheet up to the light, then dropped straight into the verge and came up with nothing, which is how most of my nights go.

Mr Okafor in bed four asked me this morning whether the peonies along the path were out yet. I told him they were still tight green knobs, and he said his wife always cut them too early, so they flopped by the time she got them in water. He said it as if it were the most important thing he'd remember all week, and I suppose for him it was.

Then at six, when the sky over the multistorey had gone the colour of weak tea, I went out for my break and found three of them open by the bins. Pink, heavy, dew still sitting in the middle of them, with a line of ants that had no business looking so pleased with themselves. The kestrel had gone. I stood there longer than I should have.

I'm bringing him a stem on Friday, wrapped in a damp square of kitchen roll. I'll tell him they came out in the dark when nobody was watching, which is more or less what happened, and he can tell his wife, and she can say she told him so.