A tear betrayed me, scuttling down my cheek before I could stop it. Caro reached across and dabbed it away with her napkin. The smell of Chanel Number 5 and the sudden heat of the dining room and sizzle of fresh bacon swilled around my head and instantly I grew nauseous and I had to get out. ‘I need some air.’

I didn’t think she was going to follow me out on deck but she did. I perched on the edge of a planter as the buzz of her wheelchair approached. The breeze whipped my hair extensions and blew them all around my head. I grabbed them by the handful and tucked them inside my T-shirt.

I stroked the leaf of an agapanthus, only to find it had a serial number on the stem. ‘They’re fake. They’re fucking fake,’ I said, trying to tear off one of the leaves. ‘There’s no smell at all. Even the stems are plastic.’

‘Well, you can’t expect flowers to bloom all year round, can you?’

‘Why bother? Why bother to plant them at all?’

‘Because they make people happy. Some people anyway.’

‘Yeah, well. The boot that fits one always hurts another, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s misquoted – and it’s a shoe,’ she said.

‘It’s not a real garden. There’s nothing real here. It’s all fake. It’s all plastic.’

‘Some of the plants are real. Those are,’ she said, pointing to a palm with wide green fronds. I got up and went over to sit next to that instead. Stroked a leaf. Inhaled it. Tried to imagine I was somewhere else. Except there was nowhere else to go, even in my imagination.

‘Let’s go into Barcelona today,’ said Caro. ‘I’ll organise a car to take us round. We can go and find a real garden, one you’re not going to demolish, perhaps?’

Dad used to do that, linger when I was in a strop, trying to find ways of making me smile, of bringing me back to life. He usually managed it with the promise of buying me a book or Sylvanians or taking me with him to watch him and his mates thump the crap out of a paedophile. But Caro wasn’t my dad or my mum or Seren. She didn’t really know me and owed me nothing.

‘I’m going back to bed.’

‘No you’re not. I won’t let you.’

‘Why don’t you leave me alone? You will eventually anyway.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘You’re going to die.’

‘Eventually, but not today.’

‘Trust me, I’m no company.’

‘Is that what you want? Solitude? To wallow in it?’

‘I don’t know what I want.’

‘Right. Let’s go into Barcelona.’

‘What for?’

‘To look at the sights, the architecture. And to eat until it fucking hurts.’