“Now I come away from visiting her and I think, if only I had the decency to put a pillow over her head. Because what you see today is nothing. People with Alzheimer’s, they spend much of their lives in a state of … abject terror. She is going to be robbed of everything human slowly, implacably, drop by drop. She’s sixty-three years old and she’s strong as an ox. The women in her family live forever. She could go on for another thirty years.”

He lets out another deep groaning sigh. “I don’t know why I think Hell’s in Baghdad. I should be drawing the residents of Blythevale House.”

They are sitting over coffee and cakes at an old-fashioned pastry shop in Hampstead. Rat reaches out and takes his hand and he grips it tight for a moment before letting go.

“I feel I gave you a rather unfair impression of my mother the other day, calling her amoral,” he continues. “She was one of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met. Utterly allergic to cant. Quite strict in her own way, too. There were things she loved, and she wanted me to know about them, too. She didn’t mind bad behavior, but she couldn’t stand ignorance. I’m sorry you didn’t meet her when she was still there, mentally. You would have enjoyed each other. You’ve got some of the same freedom.”

Rat nods. That moment’s joy at escaping from the nursing home has been succeeded by monumental depression. She feels too depressed even to hold up her head. It takes a tremendous effort to force out the words. “What sort of things was it she loved?”

“She loved continental Europe. She wanted me to speak other languages—not to be a British philistine. She loved the sea. She swam even when it was very cold. She was a beautiful swimmer. To watch her dive off the rocks … I have very strong memories of her in those inlets south of Collioure. Where you told me your dynamite factory was.

“She loved paintings, certain periods of painting. Nineteenth-century French painting, Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas: the satirists. She thought the French very shrewd and witty. Certain poets. We used to read Shakespeare plays together. She liked Antony and Cleopatra, she said, because they were such shameless old fools.

“She loved food. You wouldn’t think it because she was so thin, but she ate like a horse. Couldn’t cook, but she loved to eat. The last trip I took with her, just after Artemio was born, we went to San Sebastián, to the film festival. It was autumn, we’d walk on the beach. There was a tea shop she loved where you got the best hot chocolate in the world.