Joe and Lucy arrive shortly afterwards, with packets of Babybels and Jammie Dodgers piled up in their arms. Lucy spends the afternoon going from cheese to biscuit, then biscuit to cheese. At one point, I see her sandwich a Babybel between two biscuits and eat it in one bite. Her bump is showing now and Joe can’t stop touching her. He is the sort of expectant father who refers to the birth as a joint venture and knows every answer to every question about pregnancy. They arrive in their new navy car, with Lucy shouting at him about parking. It’s already been fitted with a seat for the baby. One day that baby will sit on a bench, wondering if that navy car is scrap metal somewhere, wishing it could come collect them.

Lola turns up with sherbet and strawberry laces, wearing a blue gingham maxi dress and a matching parasol. She has a date later this evening. A man from a new app, which matches you on mutual dislikes rather than mutual likes. They’ve been talking about their shared hatred of country music and tomatoes in paninis for five days solid now. Despite the fact he’s a Gemini, she thinks he may be the one. (We persuade her not to take the parasol.)

Dad remembers Albyn Square as soon as he arrives. He remembers teaching me to ride my bike in circles, he remembers the day I fell out of the mulberry tree and needed stitches on my knee, he remembers the bench where they sat with me a few days after I was born. I have given up sifting through the timeline of his memories, trying to work out which is the sediment that will stick. Some days he can’t remember who I am, sometimes he remembers the grades of all my violin exams. I like to think of everyone he loves as a gallery of Picasso paintings that hang in his mind – in a constant state of fascinating rearrangement, rather than in the process of erasure.

He sits on the bench and talks to Joe about cricket. Mum sits on the grass and Lola shows her how she’s learnt to fishtail braid her own hair. Olive eats all the sherbet while no one is looking.

Katherine’s made me a cake – she asks me to sit on the bench next to Dad while she indiscreetly takes it out of its carrier behind Mark’s back. It is three-tiered and lopsided and covered in buttercup-yellow icing.

Everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’. Lola harmonizes badly, Freddie giggles in my lap, Mum takes a photograph. Olive crawls under the mulberry tree. The tree that lives inside me and is impossible to demolish, only hide or lose through ever-moving mists. The tree that grows up through me, the trunk of which forms my spine. Katherine holds the cake below my face and the candles flicker lightly in the still heat of the day. ‘Make a wish,’ she says. I close my eyes and think of all the paths that lie ahead, none of which I can see yet. None of which I can plan for, only walk towards with faith. I blow out the candles of my cake for the thirty-third time. Another year begins.

Acknowledgements

I could write ten pages of thanks to Juliet Annan. For her instincts, wisdom, wit, insight and straight-talking. But she’s already had to edit enough of my rambling in recent years, so instead I will say this: I loved every single moment of writing this book. This is entirely thanks to Juliet, who is, I’m pleased to say, right about everything.

Thank you to Clare Conville for her unwavering guidance, passion and kindness. There is no better woman to have in your corner.

Thank you to Jane Gentle, Poppy North, Rose Poole and Assallah Tahir – celebrants and strategists, guardians of my work and sanity.

Thank you to Ruth Johnstone, Tineke Mollemans and Kyla Dean – grafters, go-getters, total and utter dames.

Research was needed to write a part of this story and I am grateful for the generosity of the people who shared their experiences, expertise and information with me. Thanks to Julian Linley, Hannah Mackay, Hilda Hayo, Holly Bainbridge, Howard Masters and Dementia UK.

Thank you to my first readers for their encouragement: Farly Kleiner, India Masters and Edward Bluemel.

Particular conversations with friends inspired much of these chapters – I’m especially thankful to Tom Bird, Sarah Spencer-Ashworth, Monica Heisey, Caroline O’Donoghue, Eddie Cumming, Octavia Bright, Helen Nianias, India Masters, Laura Jane Williams, Farly Kleiner, Will Heald, Max Pritchard, Ed Cripps, Sabrina Bell, Sarah Dillistone and Sophie Wilkinson.

Thank you to Lorraine Candy, Laura Atkinson and the Sunday Times Style for their support as I wrote this book.

An ongoing, lifelong thank you to Lauren Bensted, with whom I have been in the middle of a conversation since we were fifteen. Every writer dreams of having access to a brain like yours. I’m so lucky to get it second-hand. Thank you for everything you say at the pub (even the bollocks) and thank you for always letting me write it down.

And thank you to Sabrina Bell, for a great many things – but particularly for always knowing it, when knowing it seemed impossible.