‘Easy, Dad,’ I couldn’t resist saying, as I eyed him carefully. His eyes accepted a tiny defeat. Making the most of it, I turned him around and headed him towards the stairs.

‘Why not have a bit of a zizz yourself and come down and help me later?’ I suggested.

He hesitated at the bottom. ‘Might just have forty winks,’ he conceded eventually. ‘But I’ll be back,’ he warned. ‘I won’t be long.’

I watched him go, muttering about bossy bloody females and how hag-ridden he was, but he went, nonetheless, and I knew I wouldn’t see him again until morning.

I threw off my jacket, rolled up my sleeves and surveyed the chaos, then set about it. As I went back and forth to the dining room and sitting room, I realized I felt a hundred times better than I had done a couple of hours ago. I also realized I was humming along to Nina Simone.

17

Dan was waiting for me at the pub when I pushed through the door of the Rose and Crown on Friday. It was warm, softly lit, busy but not crowded, and he was perched at the bar with a beer, engrossed in a newspaper. It made a welcome change from seeing someone staring at their phone – not that I met many men in pubs, it occurred to me; indeed, I hadn’t, for about a hundred years. I had the advantage of seeing him first and he was wearing a soft blue jumper which I could tell even at this distance was cashmere. It went rather well with his still boyishly pink complexion and his swept back fair hair. He turned and smiled broadly as I approached, folding away his paper and getting to his feet. I apologized for being late which I wasn’t really, and he assured me he’d just got there, although when I looked at his half-empty glass it appeared he’d been there a while. When he’d ordered me a gin and tonic he asked after my parents, and I told him they’d finally recovered from the morning after the night before and explained about my day administering to the severely hung-over. On the down side, I told him, it had been exhausting, but on the plus side, it had had the advantage of rendering them horizontal and immobile on their respective beds as I’d popped in and out with soup and Alka-Seltzer, my father mumbling about the possibility of a dodgy prawn in the fish pie.

Dan chuckled as he paid the barmaid for my drink and passed it to me. ‘They’re incorrigible. After you’d dropped her off with Betty, Mum apparently spent the whole day lying on a sofa with a mask over her eyes, complaining that climate change had made the days much brighter than they used to be.’