There must have been a dozen examples, but the words ‘difficult’ and ‘difficulty’ – though Claire might have used them herself in the interview; Patience might simply be following her lead – got in the way. They presented Claire’s mother as a kind of obstruction, like a tree toppled across the road. They implied that Claire had imagined her that way too.

‘Let’s call her independent. Or eccentric. All right?’

‘I have offended you.’

‘No, no, you haven’t, not at all. I just want us to think about the words we’re using. Older women are dehumanised enough already, don’t you think?’

Every weekday, first thing in the morning, Claire visits her mother. She strips her and washes her with perineal wipes, going carefully around the twisted pink tubes of her haemorrhoids. She helps her into clean Depends, gets her dressed and breakfasted, and settles her in the gold brocade chair by the window. Then she goes to work: she works at the university library, as a subject librarian for the English department. At the end of the day, she goes back to her mother again and makes dinner. Often she stays until her mother is in bed, then drives back to her own flat, where half her books are still in boxes, and sleeps a sleep that clenches her jaw. The flats of her molars feel strange to her these days, unfamiliar formations too close to the ground.

She spends the weekends with her mother too, except for Sunday afternoons, when she insists on disappearing for a few hours. Her mother complains only moderately about this. Claire might look in the shops, or see a film, or – more recently – go for a slow swim in the adults-only lane at the leisure centre, which leaves her hungry and hollow for the rest of the day, and makes her mother moan about the chlorine smell.

It has been this way, or getting this way, for a long time now, at least twelve years; though when she thinks back, it is hard to recall her mother not needing attention. There are few dividing moments in the smooth run of years, few abrupt accelerations. The first angina attack, perhaps. The arthritis diagnosis. The biggest marker, really, was left by Claire’s brother, Ross – his moving away. He lives in Hong Kong now, doing something high-stakes, financial. She pictures him working in a skyscraper mirrored like a pair of expensive sunglasses.

‘Who’s that in the car?’ Claire’s mother wants to know. She has watched them park from the living room window, from her chair.

‘That’s my friend Patience.’

‘Patience? What sort of a name is that? Who makes new friends in their forties?’

‘I’ve brought her to see you.’

‘You’ve left her outside.’

Her mother’s eyes are pink again. Conjunctivitis. They can’t seem to get rid of it: she rubs them, she wipes it everywhere, then she catches it again.