Above the fireplace was a large portrait of an old lady, her skin gently wrinkled, her hair tightly permed, her eyes twinkling as if lit from within. Madi liked it. The photo, and the woman herself, had real character, the sort of character that came with being old but still mentally alert and cheekily lively, and that she would have loved to capture onstage, and still might one day, if all went well. As a kindly yet knowing Miss Marple perhaps, with some clever make-up, and layers of padding bundled up inside her dress. She wondered who the woman was. Possibly Prue’s mother or grandmother, but she decided it was none of her business and went in search of something to drink and, if she was to have any hope of getting the fire going, a box of matches.

There was no sign of any alcohol, not that she should be drinking much anyway while she was taking her medication, but she’d always believed a little of what you fancy did you good. Oh, God, the pills! Even after leaving them right next to her on the bed as she’d unpacked, she’d still managed to leave them upstairs. She’d become so forgetful lately, so easily distracted. Putting things down somewhere and then finding them somewhere else. Losing things altogether. She’d lose her head if it wasn’t screwed on. Bloody cancer had a lot to answer for. But what if it was something else? Thinking back, it might even have started before her cancer was diagnosed. There had been that night when she had left the tap dripping in the bathroom, with the plug still in the sink. If she hadn’t got up to use the loo and found it just in time, she would have flooded the place, and quite possibly the flat beneath hers as well. It might have been nothing, the sort of thing that happened to anyone when they were tired, but you heard such stories, about people getting forgetful as they got older. Putting the kettle in the fridge or getting on the wrong bus … How on earth would she ever cope with work, having to learn lines again, if that was what was happening to her?

She shook the thoughts away and looked at her watch. Four thirty. A small sherry or a glass of chilled wine would go down beautifully right now, and sod the pills, but she’d just have to make do with something a little less exciting. She boiled the kettle, standing close to it and breathing in the heat. She found a jar of instant coffee in the pantry and a bottle of locally produced full fat milk in the fridge. She would have preferred her usual skimmed but at least the label told her it had been pasteurised and she hadn’t been confronted with a jug of something still steaming, straight from the cow.

The coffee warmed her as she slumped down on the sofa with the matches in her hand ready to have a go at the fire. Was it a mistake coming here? Back in London, she had started to feel that the walls of her flat were closing in on her, she had spent so much time cooped up in there lately, but all she was doing now was swapping one lonely existence for another, miles away, and bringing all her fears and her sadness along with her. She missed her old way of life, and her old body. Feeling fit, working, keeping busy. She missed the bustle of the theatre and the excitement it brought into her life. But most of all she missed her son.