‘What?’ Phil said, aghast. ‘But that’s not fair. Surely it should be all yours seeing as you are the one doing all the work, and saving the rest of them a fortune on care-home costs? When my nan was old and had to go into a home, my dad sold her house to pay for it so there was no money left for any of us.’ Grace could see that Phil had given her mother’s care needs a great deal of thought …

‘Anyway, let’s enjoy the film while we can before Mum needs me upstairs,’ Grace said, keen to move the conversation on. Phil lifted his arm away from around her shoulders and swivelled his body on the sofa until he was facing her.

‘How about I need you upstairs?’ he grinned, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively as he picked a stray curl of red hair away from her face. ‘Come on, Gracie … bet your mum is fast asleep by now. She’s probably snoring.’ And he pressed pause on the TV remote control to cock an ear up to the ceiling, as if to prove his point. Grace swallowed her mouthful of pizza and looked at Phil. She did fancy him but, to be honest, she really didn’t feel like going to bed with him right now. She was exhausted, and with her mother in the bedroom next door of their tiny terrace house where the walls were paper thin … well, it just didn’t feel right.

‘Not tonight, Phil. It’s late and I have work in the morning. And I’m tired, I was up again with Mum last night and—’

‘You see! There you go again …’ Phil sat back and folded his arms like a petulant child.

‘What do you mean?’ Grace asked tentatively. She really wasn’t in the mood for this kind of conversation.

‘Well, I thought we had sorted all this out and agreed we would put each other first for a change, instead of you always putting your mother first. I even let you pick the film!’

‘I’m doing my best, Phil.’

‘Are you? You know, I reckon you don’t even want to put me first.’

‘Of course I do.’ Grace heard her voice jump up an octave. ‘But I can’t just not bother with my mother … what would become of her if I just did whatever I liked and wasn’t around to care for her?’ She cringed as the sense of déjà vu shot through her, for she was certain she had said the exact same words to Matthew shortly before she had found him in bed with another woman. ‘My mother can barely even move on her own, so she’d end up dying of hunger,’ she added, bleakly, desperate to make some kind of sense of the situation she was in now, and with no way out anytime soon that she could see.