Upstairs, I notice that, for once, Catherine has left her door ajar. Up till now, I’ve resisted being nosy but, for some reason, today I push the door open a little wider and step inside. After all, it’s not actually her room, is it? I have a perfect right to enter it when she’s not here. What if I were to need a spare coat hanger from the wardrobe, for instance?

Except of course, I don’t. I have no reason to be standing here in the doorway looking at how Catherine has settled in other than pure curiosity and maybe a smattering of annoyance that her stay here might end up being longer than two weeks.

The room smells of her. Or rather, the coconut oil she likes to use. I can see that she’s made some attempt to organize things, but lots of her stuff is still in boxes and bags on the floor. To be fair, there’s nowhere else for it to go.

The duvet has been hastily pulled into place, a corner of the rumpled bottom sheet still visible at the end of the bed, and a flimsy pair of bed shorts and camisole top have been flung onto her pillow. I’m glad she always wears that blue toweling robe of hers, the one that’s hanging from the hook on the back of the door. I’d hate for Ross to see her in this getup.

A memory flashes into my mind. Alice and I following her to Nando’s one sunny Saturday. The denim shorts she’d made herself cut so high that half her bum was hanging out.

I give the rest of the room a quick scan. Catherine has arranged her books on the floor against the wall. Most of them are nursing textbooks, but there are also a few psychological thrillers, a couple of old foreign-language phrase books, and an illustrated children’s Bible. I’m surprised she has something like this. She doesn’t strike me as particularly religious.

I pick it up. I used to have one a bit like this. There’s a picture of the three wise men arriving at Jerusalem on its dog-eared jacket and the pages have that thin, silky feeling. The illustrations remind me of those Hollywood epics from the 1950s and ’60s that I used to watch with Dad. On the inside cover, an inscription reads: “Xmas 1994. To Catherine, with love from Nanny Dot.”

Nineteen ninety-four. My year of birth. Alice’s, too.

Nanny Dot. She mentioned her the other day, didn’t she, when we had coffee together after my scan?