‘The one with the evil eye, who you brought to see me.’ Despite having only paid a single visit to the previous nursing home, Zac clearly made a lasting impression. All the more remarkable when you consider how faulty her memory is. ‘I detested him. I told him so. When you went away to talk to the waitress, he said terrible things to me.’

On a better day I might smile at my grandmother’s persistent insistence on referring to the director of the previous care home as the waitress.

‘Grandma, I think you must be talking about the old place, not this one. You can’t have had a visitor. No one knows where you are, and the people who work here won’t let anyone in to see you unless I’ve given permission.’

Katarina returns. She puts a light hand on my grandmother’s shoulder. ‘Are you having a wonderful time with your lovely granddaughter, Mrs Lawrence?’

‘No,’ my grandmother says.

‘My grandmother hasn’t had any visitors today, other than me, has she?’

‘No. Of course not. You know that cannot happen. Not with our procedures.’

‘Has she been alone at all today? I mean, is there any way someone could have slipped in?’

‘No.’ Katarina shakes her head to emphasise it. ‘That is not possible.’

‘In the garden this morning,’ my grandmother says. ‘You are all so stupid. You are always insisting on pushing me out there for air like some big baby put out to nap in a pram. It rained on me. I got wet. I will probably catch pneumonia and die. You are trying to murder me.’

‘Can you describe the man, Grandma?’

‘I don’t need to. I know who he was. That boyfriend of yours. The bald one with the strange eye. I still detest him.’

I manage a nod to acknowledge that she has spoken. I have a new thought, and I cannot decide if it is liberating or suicidal. Perhaps it is both. The thought is that I am too tired to run any more, and I am losing the will to hide. Doing these things didn’t save Jane. Doing these things takes every last drop of energy and concentration. Doing these things has taken over my very being. Zac is here, and I need to face that fact.

But there are more mundane things I need to face, too. ‘Can you please do something for me, Katarina?’

‘Of course.’ Katarina slips a black scrunchy from her curly brown hair and re-does the knot at the top of her head, tightening and neatening before fastening it once more.

‘Can you get them to dipstick my grandmother’s urine? It wouldn’t hurt to check . . .’ I break off. My grandmother finds it mortifying for such a thing to be discussed, but she gets bladder infections all the time, and they make her memory and general befuddlement even worse.