The hospital released Helen that night, but the stress of the evening stayed with Nina. It was still with her the next day when she debriefed with Jared. Up until this point of her stay she had tried not to call him, sticking to messages when she had questions or updates. She had called him briefly on the way to the hospital, and then again to let him know when Helen was released. He rang her the following morning and they spoke for a long time. During the call, she suggested that they get a valuation for the house. It was something they’d talked about before, though only in general terms, agreeing they would need to get one down the track. Now she volunteered to get the real estate agents in.

‘Let’s see what they say,’ she said. Jared didn’t need persuading.

Early the next week, she arranged to show two real estate agents around the house. The agents were awful, both of them, perspiring with eagerness in their suits. Nina put her mother (nicely dressed) in the good sitting room downstairs, perched on the beige sofa that even after several decades was still as stiff and unyielding as hospital-grade plastic. She gave Ronnie her phone to let him FaceTime his dad. This kept him occupied while she spoke to the agents and wrote down numbers on a card, estimates of the house’s value. Once the second one had left, she had to hunt for the phone to call her brother.

‘Where is the phone, Ronnie?’

But he was making a game of rolling on the sofa, from one armrest to the other, squirming roughly past his nanna at the point where her bottom blocked his route. He squealed with delight as he tunnelled back and forth, while his nanna sat helpless.

‘Stop that, Ronnie!’ Nina told him on seeing the distress on her mother’s face. ‘Stop it and say sorry to Nanna.’

She could see he was struggling with the idea that his nanna was somehow vulnerable, defenceless. Actually, she couldn’t blame him. She was struggling with this too. Nina thought of her mother as someone who was good with kids. Helen was – had been until recently – a capable primary school teacher, the one exercising patience in a room full of little horrors, giving out colouring-in tasks and reading picture books aloud. It was only four or five years ago that she retired from the job, saying she was making way for someone younger and quicker on their feet.

It was confronting, the change in Helen. Confronting for them all. Nina had kept up with her mother over Skype, but most of their calls were taken up with Ronnie-and-Nanna time, and her exchanges with her mother were brief and incidental. And how are you getting on? she’d ask, trying to gauge how Helen was. She regretted the talks they didn’t have when it was still possible to have them.