‘It’s not always an easy job. As I’m sure you’re aware,’ added the manager, fixing him with a pointed look.

And now Valentine felt guilty. He’d seen how hard it was looking after Gisele at home. Constantly spilling and, later, soiling. Dressing and undressing. He hadn’t been able to cope. That’s why she’d come to live here.

He felt his eyes well up, threatening to betray him, and he blinked hard. He wished Helen, his daughter, was here. She was so clever and always so calm in situations like this; people respected her. She’d know all the right things to say.

‘I know you’re doing your best.’

‘Everything we do is in your wife’s best interests, Mr Crowther,’ said the team leader kindly, and the manager nodded.

It was as if the air was being let out of a balloon. Valentine felt himself deflate. He wasn’t here to get angry or argue. Mr Richards was a nice enough man. Young, probably in his forties, with a wife and children, judging by the array of silver-framed photographs. His wife probably made him his tea when he got home, washed and ironed his shirts; kissed him goodnight after they’d made love.

Or maybe it was one of those modern marriages – maybe he ironed his own shirts and cooked his family’s tea. Either way, Mr Richards had no idea of the horror that could be lying in wait ahead of him. That while his wife was booking a family skiing holiday at half-term, and he was wondering whether to increase his pension contributions, there might well come a time when she would have no recollection of that holiday. Or of him, in fact. That when he showed her those silver-framed photos of the kids, she’d smile and nod, then ask who they were. Or that he’d be spending his retirement alone.

But maybe he’d get lucky and it wouldn’t happen to him. Valentine hoped it wouldn’t. He wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. Not that Mr Richards was his enemy. He just didn’t have a clue. It didn’t matter how many certificates he had hanging on his wall to show how qualified and experienced he was in dementia care, nobody really had a clue until it happened to someone they loved.

‘Gisele told me today, she wants to see the sea again.’

‘The sea?’ Mr Richards frowned.

Valentine got a sense that he was losing patience.

‘Mr Crowther. I was rather hoping our meeting today could be spent discussing the arrangements we’ve put in place for her to see a doctor to assess the current situation. On his recommendation, it might be that your wife needs to be referred for blood tests.’

Words. He used so many words. Valentine had never been a man of words; he left school at fifteen, and since then he simply got on and did things. What was there to discuss? His wife was suffering from a disease that no number of blood tests was ever going to cure. But somehow, in the growing fog of her mind, she’d glimpsed a memory of their trip to Whitby with their daughter more than fifty years ago. The feeling of sand between her toes. The salty smell of the sea. The sound of the waves. Talking about it had made her come alive again, and Valentine wanted to grab on to his wife once more before she slipped away.