She looked at him; she looked at him and she didn’t look away.

Tentatively, he reached out and stroked her cheek.

His hand was warm. She felt her body exhale.

They stood there as the snow fell.

Holly had woken with the feeling that she would be the next person to die. It wasn’t a gloomy thought – she’d never needed sympathy. But as she slept it had sunk in, deeply, that there was no one left in the generation above her. Freida was dead. Her mum was dead. And her dad – he’d been the first to go, from a stroke. The same thing that had killed Freida, in the end.

She could remember standing outside the hospital doors, letting the summer sun warm her shoulders, before she plucked up the courage to step inside. She was just twenty years old. She was not a mother yet, or a grandmother. But she was, and always would be, a daughter. She hadn’t spoken to her father in over a year.

She had written the number of the ward, and directions to reach it, on the back of an envelope. It was the first thing she’d grabbed when her mum phoned. It was the practicalities she’d focused on: Is he stable? Where is he? Can I come today? Just like it was the practicalities she focused on as she navigated the twisting hospital corridors that smelled of antiseptic. Every T-junction had a sign. That was useful. The floor tiles squeaked underneath her shoes.

She knocked on the door of the ward, even though it was open.

Her mum had told her that the stroke had paralysed the left side of his body, that he could only open one eye, and that he dribbled. She’d said she wanted her to be prepared. Holly was grateful for that. But her mum had gone home to get some rest. Holly was here on her own, to see her father, to make things right, if she could.

She had finally told her parents about meeting Freida. About what she was working on.

They had been disgusted. They’d argued, again. She hadn’t been surprised. No one had won. Holly hadn’t been home since. It had been terrifyingly easy, to choose Freida over her parents.

She pulled a chair close to the bed, took her father’s hand. It was clammy, frail.

‘Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s me. Holly.’

He turned towards her, and she saw what must have been a smile twist his lips. Her mum had been right about the drooling. She couldn’t lean forwards and mop it up though – she couldn’t be the one to make her dad feel as though he needed help. So instead, she started talking to him as if there was nothing wrong – as if they were sitting on the old concrete patio and the aeroplanes overhead were drowning out the birdsong.