‘And what might you put up in the rain?’

She was thrown by this and killed some time with repetition. ‘What might I put up in the rain . . . A shelter?’ she said, as if it were an initiative test. It was a vaguely sensible answer, wouldn’t you say, Dr. R? ‘I might light a fire,’ she continued, confident but in the wrong vein.

Dr. Rhys Evans flashed those teeth. ‘All right. And what is nine plus eight?’

‘Um . . . nine plus eight . . . is, ooh. Eighteen . . . no . . .’ She was beginning to panic. She wanted to pass this test so badly, to be told that everything was all right, that she wasn’t losing her mind. ‘I just can’t think for the life of me.’ She laughed.

‘Never mind. Can you spell the word “difficult” for me?’

‘Difficult. D-i-f-f-f . . . c-l . . . t.’ I smiled at her encouragingly. She had always been an excellent speller. I felt humiliated for her.

‘That’s wonderful. And what were the words I asked you to remember at the beginning of the test?’

‘Oh.’ she said. She looked quizzical. She had no idea what the doctor was talking about.

‘Remember, Mamma?’ I said. ‘You had three words at the beginning to remember?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, glad for my intervention. ‘Thank you, darling. Now what were they? . . . Now, hang on . . . Oh bugger! . . . Starlight?’

‘Yes!’ I said to her, and she looked so pleased with herself. Starlight had been the name of her pony as a child. Horse-Pony-Starlight. There was a logic to it; I’d have given her half a point. But Dr. Rhys Evans did not look impressed.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You did just fine.’ But my mother seemed downhearted despite fond memories of galloping across fields on Starlight. Just then the nurse came in with her blood test paraphernalia and sat down next to my mother. ‘Thank you, Sebo,’ said Dr. Rhys Evans, and let her eyes settle on mine after noting the make and model of my shoes.

‘So how’s Ness doing? I haven’t seen her about,’ she asked, while Sebo rolled up my mother’s sleeve. I could tell Dr. Rhys Evans had been waiting to ask me this and was delighted to have me cornered in her office. She wasn’t asking in a concerned way, she was asking in a gossipy way; there was that undeniable edge of excitement in her voice. I’d heard it in a few others when they asked about Ness and Leah (I seemed to have found myself being their director of communications).