We made three visits that week.

The first evening, for once, I had plans to go out. My father scotched them quickly. We had to go and see Mum in hospital.

Hospitals. I was sick of hospitals. The hospital was an hour’s drive each way. We had been going there forever, we went just last week. Mostly I went quietly, but did we really have to go again so soon? I was a teenager, I wanted a normal life. My mother had made everything difficult by being so selfish as to fall sick. I had more household chores than most of my friends, fewer lifts, less laughs - why me? - why now? - it wasn’t fair.

My father held back from why. Up until then he had retreated into his version of 1950’s masculinity, tight-jawed, stoical, and largely silent. I put him through it that day, arguing. He finally lost his composure, smashed a cup, shocking me into silence. I agreed to go, slamming the car door too hard with monstrous ill will, morose for most of the drive.

Mum had been sick for over two years, but by the time we reached the hospital bed something had shifted, in me, in everything. Things were in a bad way; it hurt. This had happened before, though, hadn’t it? Last time she clawed her way back. We all did. This time, though, she seemed weaker. She was conversing strangely, rambling in an unfamiliar, disconnected way, snatching at rafts of small talk, groping for the ordinary world.

My father and I had no lifelines, our grip on ordinary was long gone. We struggled for things to say. I hadn’t been told the whole story; he had never been much of a talker. Between us was a huge generation gap and mutual incomprehension. Mum was the conduit, the bridge, the base of the triangle.  Without her, communication was collapsing fast.

We didn’t stay long. She fell asleep and we drifted out. Dad was oddly talkative on the way back; it was unsettling. He went on about ‘adjusting’. Adjusting? Already they had moved Mum’s bed downstairs, closer to the bathroom. What now? Was he going to knock walls through again? White plaster dust and mess everywhere again. More stuff to clear up. I didn’t understand, didn’t really want to understand. What was going to happen now? When was she coming home?