‘Home again,’ I said cheerily as I opened the front door, trying to gently re-root Dad back in reality. ‘That was a nice bit of nostalgia, wasn’t it?’

‘Nostalgia,’ he repeated, hanging his charcoal coat on the hallway wall hook. ‘Greek. Conjoining of nostos and álgos. Gorgeous.’ He smiled at me. ‘I must go to bed, I’m spent.’

‘All right. I’m going to stay tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight,’ he said, and went upstairs holding the bannister with every step.

In the predawn hours of the next morning, unable to sleep, I went to Dad’s bookshelf and picked up his dictionary of English etymology. I sat on the floor, cross-legged, with my back pressed against the sofa, and flipped to N.

Nostalgia: Greek compound combining nostos (homecoming) and álgos (pain). The literal Greek translation for nostalgia is ‘pain from an old wound’.

10

The doorbell rang. It had been a few days since Dad had gone missing, and I’d stayed at the house since I’d brought him home. Mum and I had been sitting nervously at the kitchen table. Dad was busy upstairs sorting through books in his soon-to-be-converted study.

‘Okay, remember to be as clear and detailed as possible with her about all the information,’ I said. We both stood up to go to the door.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘We’re incredibly, incredibly lucky to have been assigned an Admiral nurse. We have to make the most of her being here. Please don’t brush over things when you’re talking about Dad.’

‘All right, all right.’

We opened the door to a woman in a bright-red duffle coat with cropped grey hair. She was short, even shorter than Mum and me, with small, round, sparkling brown eyes, a button nose and a girlish gap in between her two front teeth.

‘Hello,’ she said in a voice tinted with a Midlands accent, ‘I’m Gwen.’

‘Come in, Gwen,’ I said.

‘Thank you. Blimey, it’s cold, isn’t it!’

‘It is,’ I said. ‘I’m Nina.’ I put out my hand. She took off her fleecy glove before she shook it. It was a sweet and old-fashioned gesture, and it made me like her instantly.

‘Nina, lovely, and you are?’

‘Mandy,’ Mum said.

‘Mum.’

‘Stop it,’ she hissed.

‘Her name is Nancy,’ I said.

‘My name is Mandy.’

‘Okay, just to be clear for any documentation or paperwork, her real name is Nancy but she inexplicably wants everyone to call her Mandy.’

‘What a great idea!’ Gwen said, taking off her coat. ‘I’d love to change my name, I’ve always thought Gwen was so dull.’

Mum looked at me, eyes wide and face indignant. ‘Thank you,’ she said triumphantly.

‘Lovely name, Mandy. My favourite aunty was Mandy. Such a fun lady.’

‘It’s a fun name,’ Mum said proudly.

‘It is!’ she said.

‘Gwen, can I get you a cup of tea or a coffee?’

‘Oh, tea, please. Milk and one sugar if you have it.’

‘Coming up,’ I said. ‘Shall we all talk in the living room?’

‘Yes,’ Mum said.

‘I actually might talk to just the carer first. Who’s the carer?’

Mum and I looked at each other. It was a word neither of us had ever used, let alone discussed. Gwen had been here for less than two minutes and she had already made it clear quite how badly we were managing. Mum’s face had arranged into an uncharacteristically crestfallen expression. Neither of us said anything for a moment.

‘I suppose,’ she said quietly, ‘I suppose I am.’

‘Lovely, how about we have a chat first, just the two of us? Then, Nina, you can join us in a bit.’

I sat in the kitchen and listened to the clock tick as I tried to make out the conversation in the room next door and heard nothing. I kept recalling Mum’s face when Gwen had said the word ‘carer’. My mum wasn’t a carer. She was so many things – efficient, organized, managerial. A reliable mother, a fun friend, a loving wife. But she would never be a carer. She had been so young when she’d met my dad – their dynamic had always been somewhat dictated by their age gap and he had always been her great protector. It irritated me when I was younger – Dad was forever defending Mum’s slightly unreasonable behaviour. He was devoted to her. He was the one who cared for her. I had never, in all my life, imagined a time when he might be the one who had to be protected and defended by her.

After about an hour, Mum came into the kitchen and asked me to come through. We sat next to each other on the sofa and Gwen sat in Dad’s armchair.

‘Did you tell her everything, Mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘About the stroke, about everything the doctor said? Did you give her all the medical letters and the notes from the hospital?’

‘Nina, stop talking to me like I’m a child.’

‘She has, Nina,’ Gwen said. ‘She’s been very helpful with informing me on all of your dad’s medical history.’

‘Because I feel like I’ve been left to be the only repository of information throughout this whole thing and I can’t be that any more, I can’t. I’m so scared something’s going to happen to Dad and someone’s going to ask for all the facts and I’m going to forget something or miss something out and –’

‘Since when have you been the one with all the information? You’re never here!’ Mum said.

‘Exactly! That’s what worries me! I’m never here and I’m the only one who seems to be taking this seriously!’

‘Hang on, hang on,’ Gwen said. ‘Your mum is taking this very seriously, and we’re all going to make sure that we keep a record of important information from now on. Nina – tell me what your biggest concern is at the moment for Bill.’

‘My biggest concern is that Mum’s going to let him wander out of the house again in the freezing cold and this time he won’t be so lucky to meet people who are understanding and nice.’

‘Okay,’ Gwen mediated. ‘The front door. This is a very common problem and there are a number of things we can try.’

‘I’m not putting some huge lock on my door and making my home feel like a high-security prison!’ Mum squawked.

‘There’s lots of things we can do before it gets to that. How about a curtain? If you hang a curtain in front of the door, he won’t feel so compelled to go to it.’

‘What sort of curtain?’

‘Now is not the time to be worrying about interior design, Mum.’

‘Just a plain dark curtain,’ Gwen said. ‘And the other thing we should sort out is something called the Herbert Protocol. It’s a form we can fill out now and keep updating as Bill’s condition changes, then we have it on hand to give it straight to the police if he ever goes missing again.’

‘Okay, that’s good,’ I said. ‘Let’s do that today.’

‘Is there anything else you wanted to talk about, Nina?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Dad is misremembering things. It used to happen a bit, but he was mostly very lucid. Now he’s often lucid, but the imaginings are happening more and more. He’ll get people’s stories confused. Or the timeline of his own life muddled. He starts talking about things that aren’t happening or people who aren’t here and I think the best way to deal with it is to go along with it.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Mum said.

‘Someone told me it’s the most effective solution. And that there’s a way we can avoid contradicting his story while also not encouraging it too much.’

‘I just don’t see how that’s going to help anyone,’ Mum said.

‘He’s getting frustrated because he thinks he’s telling the truth. Imagine how frustrated you’d get if someone kept saying you were wrong about something you knew to be a fact.’

‘That’s right,’ Gwen said. ‘And as Nina suggests, there’s a way of doing it sensitively. What’s a recent example of this behaviour?’

‘He thinks his mum is alive, but she died twenty years ago,’ I said.

‘Right, so, next time that he talks about his mother, instead of telling him that she’s dead, try asking him to share some happy memories of his childhood. Or look through a photo album together and talk about the photos of her.’

‘Can you do that, Mum?’

She was picking at her cuticles, which looked red and angrily shredded, and refused to make eye contact with me.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Gwen stood in the hallway and retrieved her coat from the hook.

‘Now, you have my number and email address to get in touch whenever you need me.’

‘Thank you,’ Mum said.

‘And I’ll check in again in a week.’

Dad came down the stairs and, before Mum and I had a chance to work out what to say, Gwen walked towards him with an outstretched hand.

‘Ah! Good afternoon, Bill,’ she said with sunny, crisp formality. ‘I’m Gwen. Lovely to meet you.’

‘Pleasure to meet you,’ he replied.

‘I hear you were a teacher.’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did you teach?’

‘Children, mainly,’ he said.