He didn’t need to read it a second time. He put it down on the bed in front of him and then he stood and went to his suitcase and took out his other pair of jeans. He noticed that they could do with a wash. He must have been wearing them when he’d been to the launderette. That felt as if it had happened years ago, now. Another lifetime. Because there were other lifetimes, where different outcomes could occur. Different planes of being. He thought so. He unthreaded the belt from around the waist of them and wound it up tightly so that it fit into the palm of his hand, then quietly he left his room and walked along the corridor, past the empty nurses’ station, towards the bathrooms.

Part 3

15.

Cornwall, 2015

There had been a certain amount of bitterness between the Clarke sisters, concerning the farm. Obviously they couldn’t both live there. It was too big for a single person, in any case, even Georgie would have had to admit that. Cass and Adam seemed to assume they would continue their tenure, after Celia died: they’d already been living there for three years by then, looking after her. Georgie didn’t envy her sister that, at least. Dementia was no joke. Although at the outset it had sometimes seemed to her, visiting from London, that their mother was faking it, as if she was playing at dementia, just to spite them all. Georgie fancied that she had caught a malevolent glint in her mother’s eye, occasionally, as she sent them all scurrying about the house in search of her keys, her purse, her pen. Celia was still a commanding presence, as determined and as futile as a King Canute, bidding back the waves. But you don’t use money, nor keys: you never go anywhere! And you can’t write any more! Georgie had wanted to shout at her. Celia hid things, endlessly and – considering how doolally she was – with surprising resourcefulness and cunning. There were flashes of vituperation.

‘What do you bloody want?’ she’d asked Georgie one day, in the final months.

The district nurse was there, to help them with what was euphemistically called Celia’s personal care.

‘Mother doesn’t mean anything by it,’ the nurse had said. ‘She’s disinhibited, you see. She can’t help it.’

‘Disinhibited!’ Georgie had retorted. ‘She’s always been like this.’