‘Well, she can come and hang out here, she can eat with us, the kids can stay here . . .’ He was so kind, as always. He’d even told me that my parents could come and live with us; if my father couldn’t cope with my mother she could come and live here. (His intentions were good but in reality I knew that meant I would be looking after her, as Karl was frequently away with work and, lovely though he is, Dr. R, you and I both know he didn’t know how to use the washing machine, so the burden would all be mine – and how was I going to cope with the pressures of work, the kids, the house and my mother?)

Lying there in that crepuscular light, I felt suddenly terrified by the precarious nature of the future. I reached for his hand and he squeezed my fingers, both of us ignoring the enormous elephant padding about beside us in the room: it was blindingly obvious that we should make love – that we needed a display of unity – but neither of us was able to muster the necessary enthusiasm.

Dr. Rhys Evans was listening to my mother’s every word as she showed off her remarkable powers of recall with detailed descriptions of that day, the tea mug, what Ness was wearing, what she sang to her – but she was soon repeating herself and abruptly stopped sharing information when she caught sight of the huge needle the nurse was brandishing. My mother cried out and grasped my hand. ‘It’s all right, Mamma,’ I said. A fear of needles seems entirely sane to me: only a nutjob welcomes a stabbing. ‘Just look at me.’ I stroked her papery skin. Her eyes were suddenly pale and watery and full of alarm, her shiny blue eyeliner had slipped and smudged, and somehow she had managed to smear some of that lipstick across her nose, lending her an air of tragic comedy. She winced as the huge needle dug into her skin, so pallid next to the ebony darkness of the nurse’s hand.

‘What was I saying, darling?’ she asked me.