Both women knew there was no hope of a cure for Rhona’s liver cancer. Jude’s mission was palliative care. That was accepted between them. The old woman never talked of death, so Jude didn’t either. Some people in the last stages of her life, she knew, were terrified, some remained endlessly curious, others ignored their situation. Her job was to adjust to the needs of the individual client.

The request for her services had come from Shannon who, it turned out, was a great believer in alternative therapies. And Jude reckoned it must have taken quite a bit of persuasion for Rhona to agree to the treatment. Shannon’s mother seemed very old-school and traditional, probably of Carole’s view that all medical needs could – and should – be supplied by the NHS. And Shannon said she’d tried to get another alternative therapist to work with her mother, but after ten minutes he’d been denounced by the old woman as a ‘snake-oil salesman’.

Shannon had, however, done the groundwork somehow, because Rhona did agree to let Jude come and see her. Maybe it was a gender thing. The old woman didn’t like being treated by a man. Shannon said she thought that was probably it. In future, she’d always recommend a male therapist for a man, and a female for a woman. Jude, whose experience did not support that approach – she had had an equal success rate with clients of both genders – had not taken issue about it.

At their first encounter, Rhona was very suspicious, but Jude’s easy manner had worked its customary magic. Since then, the old woman had expressed strong views on many subjects but she hadn’t said a word of disparagement about alternative medicine.

That day she and Jude were in the downstairs front room of the younger Sheffords’ house, an unimaginatively designed seventies four-bedroomed number called, for no very good reason, Waggoners. Ideal for a young couple with two infant sons, which is what Billy and Shannon had been when they bought it. Whether the house was quite so suited to accommodating a dying mother-in-law, as well, was a subject on which Billy had been heard to express views after a couple of pints in the Crown and Anchor.