Her gaze is unsettling. It’s how she looked at me when I was a child, and in trouble. I feel like I’ve let her down, again. Haven’t I? She’s in this place, looked after by strangers, and I don’t visit often. It seems pointless. She barely knows I’m there.

Now she’s trying to speak, and point. She raises a shaky finger and waves it towards me.

‘You know it’s true!’ she croaks.

‘What’s true?’

‘I know she’s difficult, but you must stick with her.’

‘Who, Mum?’

‘With Fiona, of course. Who else?’

Fiona. My sister-in-law. She thinks I’m my brother, Ben. He seldom comes, as he lives in Australia, but last time he must have told her something about his marriage, or she’s decided something about it. I could go along with this and see what else comes out. Better not though.

‘Mum, I’m John. You’re thinking about Ben. He’s not here. I am. John.’

She looks at me sceptically. As if I’m making it up.

Then she subsides back down into herself, and shrinks into her chair. She moans, and then the sound turns into a sigh and she looks like she’s asleep.

I gaze out of the window. There’s a tidy garden and a summerhouse. The trees are bare and their branches are whipping in the wind. Endless grey cloud presses down. Beyond the garden is an estate of little houses. My mother’s house was grand, with a large and beautiful garden, and she knew how to plant it to look good all year round. She wanted to stay there. But it wasn’t practical. Twice she nearly burnt it down. She was stuck there all day on her own, unable to walk anywhere, waiting.

The afternoon inches past. She wakes from time to time and speaks, or mumbles. Nothing makes much sense. Some of it’s addressed to me, some to my siblings, some to my dead father. She speaks to me as if I were a child, or about things from before I was born. She relives conversations from 70 years ago, as far as I can tell. Sometimes it resolves into momentary coherence, like a remote radio station.

‘The garden.’

‘What about it, Mum?’

‘Go and play. Don’t kick the ball into the beds. Mummy will be cross.’

She would be, too. She always was. It didn’t stop us. I say nothing.

‘He fell into the roses once. Off his bike. I pulled out the thorns with tweezers.’

‘That was me, Mum. John. I remember it well.’

‘Better than when she broke her front tooth though. And her arm. You weren’t taking care. I made you pay. You heard her screams.’

Dad – she must be talking about him. Or to him, in her mind.