Mum offers her hands to the children, and they take them, and the three of them leave the room, and walk ahead, chatting to each other. I half-expect them to skip, like in the Wizard of Oz.

‘Isn’t she well?’ says Winifred. ‘It’s such a joy to see. You go with her, and I’ll arrange for tea and – what, lemonade? Yes, I’ll have it brought out to you.’

She turns and is gone.

We follow Mum and the children at a discreet distance.

‘Well?’ I say.

‘Your mother is… she’s more with it.’

‘More with it? Are you joking? Last time you saw her—’

‘Yes, OK, yes, she bit me—’

‘Not that. She was in a chair. Bent over. Dribbling. Talking rubbish. Wandering off in her thoughts.’

‘Yes, yes. And yes. She’s walking again. Making sense.’

I stop and look around me. I lean closer to her.

‘And Winifred? Now you’ve had a look at her, tell me you would have spotted she wasn’t a normal young woman. A human being.’

She looks at me, and I know she wants to say she noticed something. She can’t. She didn’t. She shakes her head.

‘Ha! You see? It wasn’t me being dense. She’s perfect – I mean, she’s perfectly like a human.’

‘I thought there’d be something. But no, OK, you weren’t missing anything. And also, I thought she’d be, you know, creepy. But she isn’t. At all. I do wonder though.’

‘About what?’

‘About why she’s so perfect. I mean, I get it, robots in care homes – sure. They’re all over the place anyway. Our next car’s probably going to drive itself. But why make them so lifelike?’

It’s a good question, and I’ve been thinking about it too, and reading a bit of the coverage.

‘It’s helpful in caring for people if they can form an emotional bond, and there’s a kind of tipping point. If the robot’s obviously a robot, fine. If it gets almost human, it’s repellent. Then if it goes beyond that, and it is extremely like a human, we’re all OK with it again. As we are with Winifred, right?’

‘They researched it? How humans feel about robots?’

‘Of course, and they’ve been at it for a long time. Which is the second thing. You’ve watched sci-fi movies? Star Trek? Blade Runner? Whatever? You know the idea of androids – humanoids – replicants – Helpers – has been around for years.’

‘Those are stories.’

I’ve got to watch it, because I don’t want to sound pompous and I know I’m going to, probably.

‘Every major advance in science was imagined first in sci-fi, then it happened. First, we dream it. Then we do it. Sorry.’