Gran made me feel normal when I admitted I’d rather stay in and watch EastEnders than go out and play with the other kids in the street and that it was okay not to have to be out there and loud all the time. My mother was always telling me when I was a kid that I was ‘too quiet’ and ‘too shy’ and asking, ‘Why don’t you go and mix with the other girls in your year instead of just sticking with one friend?’ But Mum is a social butterfly, fluttering from one group of friends to another with an ease I have always envied, even if I don’t want it for myself. As a result I felt awkward and uninteresting growing up, never knowing what to say. Until I met Tom at university. Tom made me feel I could be myself and I realized that, with him, I was capable of being witty and fun.

The traffic builds up as I head towards Bristol. The care home Gran lives in is off a dual carriageway in a town called Filton.

It was nearly a year ago when I started to realize something was very wrong with her. It started off innocuously enough. Gran was always a little forgetful, forever saying, ‘’Ere, have you seen my bag?’ or ‘Where did I put my glasses?’ in the Cockney accent she’d never lost despite leaving London in her twenties. She was always so independent and practical. Even up until last year she was strong and able-bodied enough to get on a train to visit me in Croydon, following a map – she had an old-fashioned mobile phone and an A-Z that was dog-eared and always in her handbag – her little Westie, Snowy, in tow. She refused to let me or Tom pick her up at the station despite us constantly offering.

The first sign was the two birthday cards she sent me, one a few days after the other, as though she’d forgotten about sending the first. Then, when she came to stay with us a few months later she’d seemed more forgetful. Snowy’s name slipped easily from her mind, and she forgot to walk or feed him until I had to remind her or did it myself. And then, after she’d been staying with us a few days, she’d turned to me and Tom one evening while we were watching TV and said, ‘’Ere, where have the other couple gone?’ It had sent a shiver of fear down my spine. Because there was no other couple. Gran had been sitting with us all evening. And it broke my heart to realize that, at times, Gran had no idea who Tom or I was, her memory fading in and out like the radio with a bad signal.