I let out a noise that’s halfway between a sob and a chuckle. That was typical of Nan. Before she’d become housebound, she used to go out each afternoon to collect the shopping for the next day. She never did a weekly shop, but picked up a couple of small bits each day, making sure she came home via the same pub, where she’d pop in and order half a pint of stout before drinking it and coming back home. She credited that daily drink for her longevity, completely ignoring the fact it was probably the walking to and from the shop that helped her health, and that the beer on the way home had probably not helped in the slightest.

But that was the way she was. It was the way she’d always been, and no-one was ever going to change her. She still had her habits and her routines from decades earlier — many of them from the war — and they’d done her just fine her entire life, thankyouverymuch. She’d been the matriarch for years, and even in her final days she’d always been keen to tell everyone exactly what was on her mind — a trait my dad has always suffered from, too. Plain talking, honest and real. No holds barred.

I wonder what she would have said to me if she’d known I’d been moping around the place worrying about petty arguments and fallings out. In fact, I don’t wonder at all. I know exactly what she would have said. She would have told me to pull my socks up and stop being so ridiculous. Far less logical and analytical than Cath, but just as motivational. She would have told me it was silly to get so worked up about a man I met on the internet, and that this probably meant he wasn’t a real person at all but was somehow some sort of digital hologram. She never did understand technology. In the end, we gave up trying to explain it to her. What was the point? In any case, her words of advice would have been the same. Stop being daft, man up and get on with it.

And, like Cath, she might not have been too far from the truth.

21

Thursday 2 January

The first day back at work after Christmas and New Year is always a slow, subdued one, but this year’s even worse than most.

Even though Nan’s death wasn’t exactly unexpected or unforeseen, it’s still hit me pretty hard. I guess there’s no way you can ever really prepare yourself emotionally for something like that. Worse, you have to watch your loved one slowly decline and lose everything they once were before having to go through it all again in one fell swoop when they finally die.

Being back at work will probably help take my mind off things — at least until the funeral.

We spent New Year’s Eve at home, watching the telly. I didn’t feel much like celebrating, and I stopped going out for New Year years ago when it started to cost twenty quid to even get into a pub, not to mention being packed in like sardines and having to queue for three quarters of an hour to get a drink.