‘I think trains make me sleepy,’ she says, rubbing her eyes. I tell her she can sleep, and after watching her not find a comfortable position, I take the aisle seat next to her, and have her lie down, resting her head on my lap. I stroke her hair until her eyes close, and she doesn’t wake up again until around thirty minutes before we arrive in Cornwall. It’s my favourite five hours I have ever spent with my daughter.

‘Why does Granny live so far away?’ Bonnie asks as we make our way out of the station. Thinking of her grandma as some mythical creature that she presumes will be like her other granny and play with her for hours and feed her endless treats. I’ve never told her otherwise. Her enthusiasm about this meeting is frightening me.

‘Bonnie, there is something you need to know,’ I say, kneeling down to her. ‘Mummy’s mummy isn’t like other grannies, OK? Sometimes she is very sad, and that means she might not want to play, OK?’

‘She won’t play with me?’ she asks me, looking disappointed.

‘Well she might, but if she doesn’t want to then that’s OK. OK? Granny June might be feeling sad because she isn’t well, OK?’

I stand back up, and we wait in line for a taxi. That went OK, I think. I don’t want to frighten her before she even sees my mother.

‘OK,’ Bonnie replies. ‘A bit like you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘You get ill, and you don’t want to play either.’

I kneel back down.

‘I’m not ill, Bonnie.’

‘Then why don’t you ever play with me?’

I don’t know if it’s the sea air, the anticipation of seeing my mum, or the fact that I have realised my mistakes just in time, but I put my arms around her and start to cry.

‘I love you,’ I tell her. Promising myself I will do better. ‘And I am sorry.’

‘Where you going?’ a taxi driver yells out of his window.

‘Come on, Bon Bon,’ I say, getting her in and doing up her seat belt. ‘Let’s go and see Granny June.’

I grew up in a pretty stone terrace on a nice street in Truro. Soon after I went to university in Falmouth, my mother sold it and bought a small ugly house on a dismal street about ten minutes away. People talk about living in Cornwall like it is heaven on earth, and it can be. My mother, however, chose to live in an ugly part of it even though she had the choice not to. She has always done things like that. As if it all adds to her trauma, giving herself full permission to wallow in it.