Dinner. The image of his dutiful preparation of a Special Meal creeps into my mind. I force a door closed in its face. Such thoughts risk derailing me. Already a strange sort of inertia is keeping me at the table – a reluctance to sign off what will be our last breakfast together, for some time at least.

Remember why you’re doing this. Remember why you’re doing this.

Do nothing and I die. Do nothing and they’ll come for Gramps. And there’s something else; something I can’t even bring myself to imagine right now.

Just remember why the fuck you’re doing this.

‘Maybe just chippy tea then?’ he suggests.

I shake away the invading thought. ‘Chippy tea. Yeah.’

Gramps points his thumb towards the stereo, inviting me to pay attention. The caller’s voice falters as he explains how helpless he feels. ‘In your own time,’ the host says smoothly. The guy says how sometimes he goes days without eating because he’s so anxious he daren’t step outside to go shopping for food.

Gramps rolls his eyes. ‘Incredible,’ he says, looking at me for agreement. ‘Ever heard anything like it? Bloody incredible. Pull yourself together, for Christ’s sake. Get out of your house and be a bloody man.’

I thank him for my breakfast, and I take his advice.

7.19 a.m.

The cold air of the night still fills the shed as I slip inside and bolt the door behind me. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the half-light, the sun struggling to cut through the film of green on the windows. Among the mowers and machine tools, the place is full of the homemade projects of my childhood: the pedal car, the petrol go-kart, the motorized raft that sank and never ran again, the various stunt kites in need of repair. Dropping my rucksack to the floor, I grasp Gramps’s toolbox with the sticker on the lid declaring Happiness is a Comprehensive Toolkit, and wrestle it to one side. Behind stands a pyramid of old paint cans, deliberately selected for their rustiness to ensure that none are at risk of being looked for.

I feel light-headed as I draw in a lungful of air and begin to dismantle the tower. When I piled them up here at the weekend, I’d thought about the ceremony of their removal, how this would finally be it. My hands shook then as they shake now.