And without all the hazards of the seventeenth-century farmhouse they currently inhabited. Even though it was dark outside, I could tell that those large sash windows rendered fabulous light in the daytime, and faced south. And Mum’s sight, much improved by removal of cataracts and new glasses, was nevertheless not what it used to be. Pope’s Farm was dark, with mullioned windows, and lots of hazardous corners. It also faced north. It had two twisting staircases and two inglenook fireplaces, which they still used, it being too expensive to centrally heat the whole house. Even though we’d banned my father from chopping logs and I’d organized a delivery, he still insisted on bringing them in, in a large, soggy tarpaulin: breathing heavily as he carefully stacked them one by one in the log basket, because the idiot boy, as he called the odd-job man who swung round on his motorbike of a Thursday to mow lawns in the summer and occasionally chop logs in the winter, threw them in the basket any old how. But here, there’d be no logs. Because beneath these smooth boards, Jerry had installed underfloor heating. And even if one of them ended up in a wheelchair – my father, possibly, with his ulcerated legs and bloated feet – he’d whizz around these shiny wooden floors and glide through the wide archway to the kitchen, where the addition of a tiny ramp would see him outside to a small terrace and manicured garden. Instead of stumbling into the four acres of tangled rose gardens, herbaceous borders and moss-ridden lawns, not to mention a long-abandoned tennis court I knew he fretted about next door.

It struck me, suddenly, that Helena and I had been very remiss. We should have done this years ago. Not waited for a crisis to pre-empt it. We should never have fallen for Dad’s lies about how they were managing tremendously well. Not that we did, really. In our hearts, we knew they were fibbing, but it suited us to go along with the lies, telling ourselves it was what they wanted, and who were we to be controlling and dogmatic? And meanwhile getting on with our own busy, and often very difficult, lives.

‘And you can entertain in here,’ my father was saying, as we all went back to the living room. ‘If it was me, I’d have a table against this wall, which you could then pull out when people come. Comme ça.’ He made an imaginary rectangle with his hands.