‘Yes. Just a short one to say he got there safely. I probably won’t hear from him for a couple of days now.’ I looked at the pretty coloured lights strung across the fence and round various potted shrubs. It was so tranquil. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. When I opened them, I looked over to Mum. She was gazing into the darkness, a faraway expression on her face. ‘So tell me about this doctor’s appointment on Friday. What’s going on, Mum?’

She sighed. ‘You don’t want to leave it until tomorrow?’

‘I’d rather know now.’

‘I thought you might. Where do I start?’ She sighed again. ‘You know how I joked this morning about my body falling apart and sometimes climbing the stairs feels like conquering Everest? Well, it wasn’t a joke. Some days it really does feel like that. It started in March. Logan had gone to bed and I was in my workshop making a bear. I needed some thread for his nose so I stood up, walked towards the thread drawers and stopped. It was the weirdest thing.’

‘What do you mean, you stopped?’ I thought about her forgetfulness with the knickers, my birthday card, Logan’s football boots in the oven, and goodness knows what else. Was that what she meant? ‘You’d forgotten what you wanted?’

She shook her head. ‘I knew exactly what I wanted and where to find it. I mean I stopped. Physically. I was walking. Then I wasn’t walking. It was like someone had super glued my feet to the floor. I can remember looking down at my feet and willing them to move, but they wouldn’t.’

‘Oh my God! What did you do?’

She shrugged. ‘Some time passed. Could have been seconds. Could have been minutes. My legs and feet started working again and that was that. I didn’t bother getting the thread out. I figured it was my body’s way of telling me it was time for bed.’

I frowned. ‘You really just stopped moving? No warning or anything?’