‘I missed my appointment. It was on Tuesday. Something came up. But your mother’s very able. She’d have been a nurse if she hadn’t married me, you know. Didn’t you always say that, darling?’

‘Oh, I’d have loved it,’ Mum said, sitting back on her heels, eyes shining. ‘With a pert little cap and those dear little puffed sleeves. Skirt nipped in at the waist and—’

‘Yes, but she’s not a nurse,’ I said curtly, cutting into her fantasy world, so horribly like my own. ‘What’s the surgery number?’

‘Oh no, you won’t get an appointment now, not if you’ve missed one. They’re dragons!’ my mother breathed fearfully. Meanwhile my father got up foghorning: ‘Perfectly all right! Nothing whatever the matter!’ and shuffled off to water his tomatoes in the greenhouse.

I got one though, an appointment. And later that day, drove him down.

‘Dad,’ I asked casually on the way into town, knowing from experience, with Ned and Imo, that these things were better broached in the car, side by side, and not face-to-face. ‘Is it too painful to drive? Is that why you missed your appointment?’

He paused. ‘Only at the moment. Be right as rain soon. Pressure on the pedals.’

‘Right. And is that why Mum’s driving?’

‘Well, she’s entitled to, darling, she’s still got a licence!’ But he wouldn’t look at me. Gazed out of the window at the scenery, like Imo used to. Right. So nothing to do with him leaving the keys lying around – this was their modus vivendi. She drove, half blind and very fearful, because he couldn’t. I licked my lips. And their house was too remote for them to walk, obviously. The bus? Yes, maybe later, the stop was only down the lane. But I knew they wouldn’t countenance it now. Two old people on a bus with their pac-a-macs and plastic bags? No. Not yet. They were in denial as much as Helena and I were. Because why hadn’t my sister and I thought this through earlier? Why hadn’t we considered how two people in their eighties might get about in the country? But Dad had always been so capable, so strong, so indestructible. I realized the difference between a man in his seventies and a man in his eighties was huge. I swallowed, gripping the wheel tightly as I drove into the surgery car park.

As I waited for Dad in reception, I felt ashamed that we’d been so cross with Mum, whereas in fact she’d been protecting Dad. And of course, they weren’t stupid. They both knew that if neither of them was driving, it would have been something of a crisis point as far as continuing to live at Pope’s Farm, their beloved home for fifty-odd years, was concerned. The house my father had always said he’d leave feet first.