I turn to hand Stella a cup of tea. I see her shudder.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

‘Hmmm, uhm, yes, I think so,’ but she doesn’t look it.

‘You know you’re a terrible liar, don’t you?’

‘Never mind me. It’s nothing. I’m being silly.’ But I notice she is holding on to the mug of tea for dear life.

‘Stella?’ I raise an eyebrow.

‘Honestly,’ she says, ‘it’s nothing. Someone just walked over my grave. If you could find me a biscuit I’d feel much better.’

I look at her for a moment, sure it’s more than that, but I know her well enough to know she won’t be drawn any further, so I start to rummage for biscuits in this house that has never been my home.

This has never been a place where I was made to feel particularly welcome.

As a teenager it had felt as if every time I’d visited here I was reminded of just how much I was no longer the centre of my father’s universe.

I’d asked him once if I could put some posters up in the spare room – the room I slept in every time I visited. He shook his head. It wouldn’t be right, he’d said. He didn’t want Natalie to think he was making assumptions. It was still her house, he said. He was just a guest. I didn’t understand it, not really. Not at the time. Natalie was always so welcoming. Annoyingly so. She was desperate for me to like her, but that was never going to happen. Not when she had taken him away from me.

I’d left my pyjamas there once, about six months after my father moved in. It was shortly after Natalie took sick, I remember that. I remember I felt, momentarily, sorry for her. I wanted to help more. To do more. I folded them and stashed them under the pillow, waiting for me to pick them up and put them back on. When I came back the following week they were folded and neatly placed in a plastic carrier bag on the end of the bed.

‘Now’s not the time to make changes,’ my father had said. I always wondered who decided that. Was it him? Or was it Natalie? Regardless, I felt a renewed hatred towards them both.

I find a pack of Bourbon creams, pass them to Stella and sit down, the only noise around us being the ticking of the big clock in the hall.

‘Do you want me to come up and see him with you?’ Stella asks, splitting the biscuit in two.

I think of all the things I need to say and want to say and shake my head. ‘I need to do this on my own.’

His room smells of dust and stale breath and illness. The curtains are drawn tight and an electric radiator is pumping out heat into a room that feels oppressively warm. I feel myself break into a sweat.