My father collected me from school one afternoon near the end of term. It was horribly humid that day, and I was cross even before I got in the car, annoyed to be missing both my running meet and Madonna on Top of the Pops. Then Alison Jackson, standing by the railings with her miniskirted cronies and their Slush Puppies, started to chant ‘Daddy’s girl’ with blue-tinged lips as I clambered into the Granada. I felt my cheeks flaming with shame; I flicked her a V when my father wasn’t looking, surprised by my own daring. Alison blew a contemptuous pink bubble in response. I stared ahead. I’d pay for it tomorrow.

We drove out to the home in virtual silence, through the bosky July lanes of Kent, through the tunnels of dappled light falling through the trees; honeysuckle and wild roses peppering the lush hedgerows. The beauty of the afternoon didn’t ease our trip at all. My father stopped to let a sturdy young woman on horseback cross into a field; she waved her crop cheerily, the chestnut flanks of her small mare gleaming like my dad’s cricket bat when it was oiled. I thought of the fat ponies I used to ride as a small child, my mum leaning over the gate, watching oh so proudly; the two of us drinking Tizer afterwards on the bench beside the paddock.

I thought she’d always be there.

Why wouldn’t I?

No one had explained to me how very sick my mother was. Perhaps they hadn’t realised. Gar was visiting friends in Cornwall, unaware of how irrefutably our lives were about to collapse – and my father, my poor father, he was so lost himself, now my mother was in this strange place.

Walking into her room, I struggled with the fact that she found it hard to even smile, although she sort of tried – and I, well, I couldn’t bear to see the shell she had become. She sat in that wicker chair in the corner like she’d given up, her beautiful red hair limp, stripped of its vibrancy, her body shrivelled. Trapped by her own depression, abandoned by her spirit.