I gave Daniel a head-start up the stairs to Charlie’s room. It wasn’t the first time he’d been up here in recent weeks – as well as using the bathroom during the retreat, he’d fetched clothes for me on the first day I’d arrived – but entering your sister’s room to fetch something and preparing to pack up her belongings for good are two very different things. I’d cried already that morning, and I hadn’t even got up the stairs yet.

Knocking tentatively on her bedroom door, I found him sitting up against the bed, feet flat on the floor, hands resting on his knees.

‘Hi.’ I moved a pile of clothes from her dressing table chair and sat down. He didn’t reply.

‘We could do this another time, or not do it at all. Have another look at the plans and come up with something else.’

He frowned, shaking his head. ‘No. It’s the only logical option.’

‘This is your family home, though. And Charlie’s. If you’re not ready…’

‘I’m ready.’

‘With all due respect, you don’t look very ready.’

He looked up at me, then, and to my surprise he was smiling. ‘I was just waiting for you, because I’ve no idea what half of this crap is, and even less of an idea about what to do with it all or where to start.’

My shoulders dropped several inches with relief. I opened the carrier bag in my hand and pulled out a roll of bin bags. ‘Three piles: keep, recycle or charity shop, and throw away.’

Then I burst out crying. Because, it turned out, I was the one nowhere near ready to divide my best friend’s life into bin bags.

We managed it, however, with a whole load more tears, some rueful smiles, deep belly-laughs and many, many stories exchanged. We had each known a different side to Charlie. Daniel knew Charlie as a little girl, before the brain demons hit. He’d known her in her peaceful place, surrounded by family, where she had no need to impress or put up any front. I knew the other Charlie – the adventurous, spontaneous, sociable Charlie. The woman who loved to get lost in a crowd, who thrived on the new and the waiting-to-be-discovered. Who wanted to cram in as much of life as she could, while she could, and bring as many people along for the ride as possible.

We also both knew the other Charlie, of course. But we weren’t thinking about her today. Today was as good a celebration as we could manage of the real Charlie, not the one imprisoned for weeks at a time by illness, lost in a bleak fog of despair.

Once everything had been bagged or boxed up, we spent another hour trooping up and down two flights of stairs, filling up both cars before Daniel drove to the local recycling centre, and I dropped off a load of clothes, bedding and other useful items at Ferrington church, where they had a pick-up point for a clothing bank charity.