“Hey, Mum.” She jumped out of the car and hurried around to open the passenger side.

“Thank you, darling, but I’m not an invalid. Not yet.” Her mother’s voice was tart but she was smiling.

“Sorry, just trying to help.”

“I know.” As Olivia climbed back into the driver’s side her mother reached over and patted her hand. “I fear, Olivia, that this is going to be much harder for you than it is for me.”

Her stomach plunged unpleasantly at that quietly stated remark. “What do you mean, Mum?”

“I knew this was coming. I tried to pretend it wasn’t, but I knew all the same.” Tina gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m afraid that you didn’t.”

Olivia swallowed hard, keeping her gaze straight ahead as she navigated the narrow road out of Witney. “Do you mean you knew you were having trouble with your memory?”

“Yes, among other things.”

Pain lanced through her, along with fear. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you, and I didn’t want to acknowledge it out loud, or even to myself. We can all be quite good at self-deception when we choose to.”

“Oh, Mum.”

“It’s all right.” Tina squared her shoulders. “I’ve lived a good life. I’ve followed my dreams—in having you, in opening Tea on the Lea. I don’t regret anything.”

A lump was forming in Olivia’s throat with every word her mother spoke. “Don’t make it sound as if—as if you’re dying, Mum.”

“I know I’m not dying,” Tina said briskly. “Yet, anyway.”

“Mum—”

“But things are going to change,” her mother cut across her, her voice gentle but firm. “They already have, even if we’ve both closed our eyes to it.”

Olivia struggled to know how to respond. Yes, they’d changed, but how could her mother be having such a calm and knowledgeable conversation about the decline of her own mind? It didn’t make sense.

“Let’s see what the doctor says,” she said finally, and her mother just smiled.

Olivia hadn’t been to the GP very often since moving to Wychwood—a chest cold once and her tri-annual cervical smear—but now as she sat on one of the vinyl-padded chairs she took in the noticeboard full of messages for memory clinics and dementia support groups, often accompanied by photos of cheerful-looking seniors and chirpy slogans such as “I Live One Day at a Time” and “Memories are Worth Fighting For.” They made her want to cry. She so wasn’t ready for this.

“Tina James?” The nurse at the door to the examination rooms was smiling and friendly as both Olivia and her mother rose and followed her down the hall.

“So you’ve been referred for a cognitive test,” the GP, one Olivia hadn’t met before, asked as he scanned her mother’s notes on his computer. “After receiving a burn on your forearm?”

“Yes.” Tina sat in the chair next to his desk, her coat and bag on her lap. Olivia sat in the plastic chair opposite, everything inside her wound far too tightly.