“He is slightly long-sighted without his reading glasses. He has two crowns either side of his front teeth. But it’s not that which worries me.”

“Yet he believes he can cure her by walking? I don’t understand. Is he a religious man?”

“Harold? The only time he calls on God is when the throttle goes on the lawn mower.” She gave a smile, to help the locum realize she was being funny. The locum looked confused. “Harold retired six months ago. Since then he has been very – ” She broke off, hunting for the word. The locum shook his head, indicating he didn’t have it. “Still,” she said.

“Still?” he repeated.

“He spends every day in the same chair.”

At this the locum’s eyes lit up and he gave a nod of relief. “Ah. Depressed.” He lifted his pen and snapped off the lid.

“I wouldn’t say he was depressed.” She felt her heart quickening. “The thing is, Harold has Alzheimer’s.” There. She had said it.

The locum’s lips parted, and his jaw gave a disconcerting clunk. He returned the pen to his desk without reapplying the lid.

“He has Alzheimer’s, and he’s walking to Berwick?”

“Yes.”

“What medication is your husband on, Mrs Fry?” The silence was so solemn she shivered.

“I say Alzheimer’s,” she said slowly, “but it’s not diagnosed as yet.”

The locum relaxed again. He almost laughed. “Do you mean that he is forgetful? That he has senior moments? Just because we forget our mobile phone doesn’t mean we all have Alzheimer’s.”

Maureen gave a tight nod. She couldn’t decide which irritated her most; the way he batted the term senior moments in her direction or the patronizing smile he was now showing her. “It’s in his family,” she said. “I recognize the signs.”

From here, she gave a brief account of Harold’s history; how his father had returned from the war an alcoholic, prone to depression. How his parents had not wanted a child, and his mother had packed her suitcase, never to return. She explained that his father had taken up with a succession of women until he showed Harold the door on his sixteenth birthday. After that, the two men had remained estranged for many years. “Then, out of the blue, a woman rang my husband and said she was his stepmother. You’d better fetch your father, she said; he’s mad as a hatter.”

“This was the Alzheimer’s?”

“I found him a nursing home but he was dead before he was sixty. We visited several times but his father shouted a lot, and threw things. He had no idea who Harold was. And now my husband is going the same way. It isn’t just forgetting things. There are other symptoms.”

“Does he substitute words with inappropriate ones? Forget entire conversations? Does he leave things in strange places? Suffer rapid mood swings?”