Imogen was, as Ned had rightly predicted, incandescent with horror at the plan. When I opened the door to her the following morning in the spring sunshine, she barely said hello. In fact, she didn’t.

‘What’s all this about you deciding to bury yourself down in Little Snoring?’ she demanded, striding past me down the hall. I watched her go with eyebrows raised. Then I closed the door behind her and followed her down to the kitchen. ‘On some misguided mercy mission, just so you can polish your halo? We all know G and G can easily afford a carer, and the last thing they’ll want is you sacrificing yourself on the altar of Granny’s alcoholism – which is what you’re doing, incidentally.’

She took off her glamorous houndstooth coat, flung it on a chair and flopped down on the kitchen sofa, facing me. She pushed her silky cream sleeves up, as if for battle. Her blue eyes were bright and determined.

‘A carer?’ I enquired mildly, crossing to fill the kettle at the sink. ‘Can you really see that happening?’

‘Well, eventually it would have to, wouldn’t it?’ she said defiantly. ‘I mean, when they really can’t resist any longer?’

‘Yes, but that point comes when the shit has really hit the fan. When the paramedics are resuscitating them, or when the courts are involved. Or even men in white coats. They simply will not agree to it, Helena and I have tried for ages.’

Imogen stared at me, tight-lipped. Then she abruptly sat forward. She put her head in her hands and massaged her brow with delicate fingertips. Both my children were fair, fine-boned and delicate, perhaps another reason I’d always felt so protective of them. They were like beautiful, ethereal, fairy children. Looks were deceptive though. This one was used to controlling things, like her aunt, and this unwieldy situation, which had foxed us all for a few years now and was getting bigger by the day, was anathema to her.

She jerked her head up suddenly, eyes wide in despair. ‘It’s like dealing with children,’ she said, exasperated.

‘Yes,’ I agreed simply. ‘It is.’ It helped, of course, that she’d spent some time with them yesterday. I wondered what she’d made of the house, the crumbling decrepitude. It wouldn’t suit her right now to say, of course. ‘That is indeed what they’ve become.’

She chewed her thumbnail. ‘It would have made more sense if you’d gone when Dad was alive,’ she said darkly. ‘Then I would have been totally up for it.’

I didn’t answer. Instead I put a cup of black coffee on the table in front of her and perched on a stool at the island. I watched her stir her coffee and cogitate. Suddenly she looked up.