‘I’ll be in tomorrow,’ Marjorie said half-heartedly, and her mother smiled and patted her hand. Bollocks. Fifteen–love to Vera.

Marjorie headed for the door and was stopped by a little old dear who introduced herself as Janet followed by ‘eighty-four’.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’m Janet, eighty-four years old,’ she said, and she took a bow.

‘Good for you.’

‘So you’re Vera’s girl, Marjorie,’ she said, and Marjorie was taken aback. How does she know?

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Oh, she hasn’t stopped talking about you, says you’re very big in the bank.’

Did she? ‘And you’re as beautiful as she reported. God bless you. I was a looker myself back in the day.’ Big in the bank? Beautiful? The biggest compliment my mother’s ever given me is that I was one of the few children who could be trusted to wear white. Thirty–love to Vera.

‘Thanks,’ she said, trying to move past her, but Janet wasn’t finished with her yet.

‘She said you were away. I’m glad you managed to get back. She needs you now,’ she said. Forty–love to Vera – auld ones always stick together. Janet had said what she wanted to say. She turned and walked away. Game, set and match to Vera Shaw. BOLLOCKS.

In the weeks after Vera Shaw’s stroke, Marjorie was forced to engage with her mother on a more intimate level than either woman was prepared for. Everything was a struggle. The woman’s legs weren’t strong enough to hold her up and she needed to be lifted on and off the toilet. This was no fun at all, especially as Vera had endured a lifetime of complications following the symphysiotomy carried out during Marjorie’s birth, complications which included bowel incontinence. Marjorie was forty years old and had never changed a dirty nappy or owned a dog, so cleaning or picking up shite was not a feature of her day-to-day life until her mother’s stroke. It never occurred to her that visitors would be forced to endure cleaning of patients’ legs, sheets, nightdresses, knickers and arses – that’s what staff were for, surely? But it became quickly apparent that if you couldn’t stand the smell of it or if you didn’t want your mother sitting in her own dirt for longer than five minutes, the job became yours and yours alone. So with eyes watering and battling the urge to vomit, Marjorie wrestled with her mother to cleanse her of unholy muck, and it was hardcore.

‘Get away from me.’ Vera punched out at her daughter. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘She’s only doing what’s right,’ Janet, the nosy auld one from bed three, said.

‘Mind your own business,’ Vera said.

‘Your shite is my business when it’s so potent I can’t just smell it I can bleedin’ taste it,’ Janet said. Too much. Marjorie threw up a little in her mouth.