The paramedics came quickly; it seemed more like seconds than minutes – the shock must have been distorting all her senses. A specialist resuscitation doctor, they said, was on the way. They checked the exact time she’d discovered him. Was there any regular pattern of behaviour to indicate when he might have returned home? That, at least, might give them an outer window for the time of the injury. She nervously asked whether he would be all right; they said, with a possible brain injury like this, it was best to wait until the CT scan. Fortunately, the local hospital just minutes away had a state-of-the-art neurological unit, one of the best in the country. The resuscitation doctor arrived and told her simply that it looked like a severe injury; but ‘your father is still breathing and his heart is still beating’. There was no reason yet not to be hopeful, though she might wish to pack a small bag for the night. They suggested she took her time to allow the scan to be done, and her father settled in his bed, supported by the stimulants and pain relief that would make him comfortable. She was not to worry if they kept him in an induced coma – there was nothing unusual about that.

Their every word terrified her.

Tenderly they slid his body, their arms cradled around his head and neck, onto a stretcher and strapped his chest and legs. A drip was set up over him and clear liquid began to sink through a tube to a needle planted in his wrist. They carried his still, prone body into the ambulance; she stayed by the front door, watching, not wanting to be in their way. For someone whose life was so often about problem-solving, she felt useless. As the ambulance door slammed shut and its rear end receded and disappeared at the junction with the high street, she felt bereft too.

She turned back inside, pushed the door shut, went to sit at the kitchen table and stared blankly ahead at the dresser holding cups and saucers, seeing nothing. Her thoughts were the flotsam and jetsam of a pilotless ship adrift at sea. Would he need a toothbrush, washing and shaving things? Would he ever be able to use them again? Maybe it was just a sort of concussion. Maybe he was subsiding in the ambulance. Was he dead already? She told herself not to be ridiculous. Like thousands of other old men and women, he’d fallen down the stairs, taken a bash on the head, and would recover soon enough.

Who should she phone? Uncles, cousins, aunts? The prospect of their fussing and worrying, the drama it would instantly become, was intolerable. She would wait till she was at the hospital and had more certainty to impart. For now, she would face it alone – as she had faced so much of her life.