DEAR PROFESSOR BREWSTER

Dear Professor Brewster,

I am Alice Longmire’s daughter and I am writing to you because I have become increasingly concerned about my mother’s memory.

I realise she is your patient and your relationship is confidential, but I wanted you to know what’s been happening, as she is unlikely to tell you herself.

She has always been vague and forgetful, but it is worsening. She calls me and then forgets she has rung an hour later; or she tells me the same story several times in an afternoon. I was particularly concerned by a recent episode in which she completely confused night and day. She got up when it was dark but was sure it was daytime, and wondered why everything was shut. She went to a friend’s house for what she thought was breakfast, only to find her eating dinner and drinking wine, much to her confusion. When she relayed the story to me some days later, she still seemed unable to untangle what had happened.

As you know, Alice is a wonderful person but absolutely terrified (understandably) about memory loss — she’s also very resistant to talking about it with me, and very good at hiding it when you see her for a quick coffee or chat on the phone. She would be upset if she knew I had emailed you — but I am worried and did want you to know.

With kind regards

Ella Longmire

Dear Ella

Thank you for your email. I understand the delicacy of the situation and will assess the issue diplomatically without involving you.

Regards

Professor Brewster.

On the day of my father’s wake, it stormed. There was a portable air conditioner in every room of his small house and each one roared like a terrifying beast, emitting only a puny puff of cool air despite its bluster.

The air was still and the clouds were gathering, clotted and thick, as my half siblings tried to speak above the great rumble of those machines, praising a man I hadn’t seen for many years but certainly didn’t remember with the fondness they seemed to feel.

‘Why don’t they turn them off?’ I muttered to Alice, who had insisted I come. ‘It’s not like they’re making any difference.’

There were ninety of us crowded into those rooms, and each and every relative of my father’s looked frighteningly familiar to me, despite the fact I knew so few of them. Tall and heavy-set, with wide hooded eyes, full lips, and a strong nose: These are the Haldons, I thought, and I am one of them.

Tom, my father’s oldest son from his first marriage, was the only one with whom I had a relationship that came close to resembling family.

He’d been born to my father and his legitimate wife five months before my mother, who lived at the other end of the street to Mr and Mrs Haldon, went into labour with me — the other child, the secret one.

Sometimes my father would bring Tom with him when he came visiting, no doubt getting some kind of perverse thrill out of seeing us together, while his wife, Judith, was bemused at this out-of-character demonstration of fatherly care for their son.

So, I knew Tom, although I didn’t know he was my brother until my mother spilled the whole sad and sorry story to me and Judith and everyone in the neighbourhood. It was my seventh birthday and we had spent hours with all the doors locked, waiting for the police. Outside, my father shouted at her to let him in. He threatened to burn the house down. Alice, he screamed. Alice.

The irritated constable who finally came reprimanded him and scolded my mother. The next morning she and I left the neighbourhood, stopping at every letterbox as we drove out, a handwritten card with the entire saga summarised, and an apology for the untoward noise, deposited (by me) in each slot.

When the thunder came it shook us all with its ferocity, a great shuddering of the bones accompanied by a crack of lightning and a sudden blast of wind. And then the rain. This was the third storm that week. Outside a tree fell, crashing onto the neighbour’s fence, and everyone screamed.

‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Tom called out. ‘It’s safer to stay inside.’

‘It’s Johannes,’ someone laughed.

I looked at Alice and rolled my eyes. She scowled.

‘No matter what you or I may think of him,’ she had told me, ‘he is your father and you need to honour his passing.’

She leant forward now, the veins in her hands blue and knotted as she gripped the arms of the chair. Sometimes she looked so frail it broke my heart.

‘I don’t like this climate change,’ she said to me, her voice barely discernible above the lashing of the rain. ‘They keep telling us about the impending disasters awaiting us, but what if we’re already living it? What if it’s happening now?’

When I visit the doctor, she asks me about my family history.

I’ve come to an age where I can no longer assume good health with the confidence I once had. She takes my blood pressure and it is high. She measures my cholesterol and it’s above what it should be. I am always tired, I complain. More than tired. Sometimes so weary I can barely function. I worry I have some strange virus that cannot be detected but is breaking down my immune system piece by piece. I worry that we are all being attacked by this virus. That it’s a product of what we are doing to the environment.

‘One thing at a time,’ she tells me.

She wants to know if high blood pressure and high cholesterol run in the family.

I tell her that Alice has always been well. She is eighty-four now and not nearly as strong as she once was, but this is to be expected. My concerns about her memory are the first real worries I have had about her health. I am not sure if she is taking any medication for blood pressure and cholesterol. I assume not. I’ve never known her to have any heart problems. There has, of course, been her neuropathy, which she seems to control with Lyrica. And I’ve told the neurologist about her increasing forgetfulness. Her mother had Alzheimer’s, and her mother before that.

I am talking too much. It’s all a jumble.

‘Blood pressure? Cholesterol? So, both fine as far you know?’

I nod.

‘What about your father?’

I look at her as though she has gone completely and utterly barmy. What about him? I think. He has had no role in my life so why would he have any relevance to my genetic make-up? A false assumption, I realise with a sickening thud.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I tell her.

Dear Professor Brewster

I know I have written to you already and I run the risk of seeming like one of those irritating, harassing relatives by writing to you again.

Alice mentioned that you discussed her memory when she saw you last and that you assured her she was doing fine. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the case. Last week she got lost when she drove to my house, despite having driven here so many times. She kept calling me on her mobile saying she didn’t know where she was. I had to tell her to go to the nearest street corner and give me the names of each of the roads. I had to make her promise not to move until I came to get her. When I found her she was in tears.

I don’t know what the ethics of this situation is, but I think she needs to be tested for Alzheimer’s so that she can have the earliest possible intervention with medication.

I am trying to talk to her about this, but I do need the support of her doctors.

Regards

Ella.

Dear Ella

Thank you for your email expressing your concerns. They have been noted.

Regards

Professor Brewster.

In his will, my father leaves me his house.

It is enough to cause World War Three to break out between the Haldons and myself.

Alice tells me I have every right to it. ‘He never provided for you,’ she says. ‘I never asked him to. But I shouldn’t have had to. You’re his daughter. And I will have nothing to leave you.’

It’s true. She lives in a small, rented flat two suburbs away from me. Fortunately it’s on the ground floor, because I don’t think she could manage stairs anymore. And she has neighbours who like and care for her. People of all ages have always liked Alice. My friends go to visit her. They seek out her opinion and advice. They suggest I bring her with me when they invite me for dinner. There are times when I find it all too close, when I would like a little more separation from her, but I know that when she’s gone, the void will be darker and deeper than the hole in the ozone layer. It is liable to swallow me whole for some time.

‘I wonder what it’s worth,’ I say, completely bemused by the strange, unexpected nature of this inheritance that I already realise I won’t be able to take without a fight.

‘Two hundred dollars?’ Alice guesses.

She isn’t trying to be funny or silly. She has lost all grasp of numbers. Concepts like time, numbers on a digital clock have gone, slipped away like a shed skin.

‘I’m seeing you tomorrow morning,’ I might tell her.

‘So when’s that?’ she will ask.

‘The day after today. Lunch, dinner, sleep, and then you wake up and it’s tomorrow.’

‘So I will see you soon then. What would you like?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘For dinner.’

I am trying not to get too frustrated — but it isn’t easy. There are bad days when I have to go through the day, the date, the time with her over and over again. There are mornings at work when she rings me at least four times, wanting me to clarify, just quickly, whether she has coffee with her friend, Diane, today or tomorrow. And then, if I tell her I am anxious about her memory, she becomes cranky. She didn’t sleep well, she says. She forgot to write the appointment down. She hasn’t called four times. Really, I do exaggerate.

Tom is the envoy sent to approach me about the house. He telephones, full of good cheer, the boom of his voice not dissimilar to my memory of my father’s.

Of course Johannes should have provided for me, he says, they all agree on that. But as the house is the principal asset, and likely to be worth a couple of million, it seems a little extreme. A little unfair. The rest of them are left with a few worthless stocks and bonds, an ancient Rover, a cellar full of red wine, and some very average art. To be split between seven. Which doesn’t amount to much.

I ask him what his suggestion is.

‘Well,’ and he sounds a little more hesitant here, ‘we include the house with all the assets to be split, and you receive a share of the total, commensurate with your relationship to him.’

‘Commensurate with my relationship to him?’

‘It’s not like you ever lived with him,’ he says, even more hesitation in his tone. ‘It’s not like you were his child. His real child, that is.’

The hesitation is sliding now towards the turning point, the tip-over into anger.

‘And if I don’t agree?’

‘The others want to take the will to the courts. To challenge it.’

I tell him to go for it.

And they do. Three days later, I am contacted by the lawyer on behalf of the estate. I am told that the assets are frozen, and that the other named beneficiaries have filed a petition in court.

Alice is suitably furious on my behalf. She tells me that I should stand up for myself.

‘I’m proud of you,’ she says. ‘You need the money and he owes you. You’re never going to earn much working for that political organisation.’

‘Greenpeace,’ I remind her.

‘You won’t ever own a house,’ she says. ‘And being old with no assets, well …’ She shrugs. ‘It’s a little like living on the edge of a cliff.’

She wants to document the amount that Johannes never paid — the costs of feeding, clothing, educating me.

‘Complete with CPI and inflation?’

She does her best not to look too befuddled at this, a scrap of paper on the table in front of her as she starts writing down figures. I am exhausted at the prospect.

‘I think I might need a lawyer,’ I tell her.

Outside the heat is unbearable, the sky thick with smoke from the surrounding bushfires, ash on the air, charred to the tongue. The news is running twenty-four hours with updates on the encroaching flames, some of the outer suburbs already evacuated. I have closed all the windows and doors, and turned on each of Alice’s fans, and they churn sluggishly. I suggest setting up some Coolgardie safes — stringing wet towels around the room to cool us. She is focusing on her nonsensical numbers so doesn’t answer, and I go to the linen cupboard.

The scrap of paper is at the bottom — an appointment with a neuropsychologist. The date: a week ago.

Alice feigns confusion. Or perhaps she isn’t feigning, perhaps she genuinely forgot, or didn’t think the appointment was for her — although who she thought it was for is difficult to fathom.

‘So you didn’t go?’

‘How could I have?’ she asks. ‘I didn’t even know it was on.’

Dear Professor Brewster

I understand you referred my mother to Vera Smythe. As you may be aware, she missed the appointment.

I have made another time for her, the week before she is due to see you next. She has agreed that I can go with her to both appointments. I hope this is alright with you.

Yours sincerely

Ella Longmire.

If your mother is happy for you to come, I have no objections.

Professor Brewster.

It takes a week to bring the bushfires under control. Two suburbs are burnt to the ground; charred remains of houses feature on the news, along with stories of heroic dogs and laconic homeowners who shrug at the camera and say: ‘What can you do? Crack a tinnie and clean up, I guess.’

The fires are followed by days of torrential rain and an outbreak of a strange virus causing a rash on small children across the city.

If I didn’t work in media relations, I’d turn everything off — computers, phones, radios, televisions.

Gretchen, Tom’s wife, rings me late at night to scream at me. Tom has lost his job and they can no longer afford their daughter’s school fees. She was relying on their share of the house. How dare I?

Sarah, Tom’s sister, tells me they are fast losing sympathy for me. What do I need money for? It’s not like I have any children to provide for.

Tom tries to cajole me. The lawyers’ fees will eat up a huge portion of the estate. Surely we can come to an arrangement?

Alice’s neighbour calls. She found her out on the street in her pyjamas at four am. Drenched to the skin she was. Drenched to the skin.

Dear Professor Brewster

The world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Ella

Professor Brewster takes my mother’s arm and leads her gently to a seat. She introduces him to me and he shakes my hand, cool, dry skin, without meeting my gaze.

He has the results of Alice’s tests with the neuropsychologist, several sheafs of paper, in front of him. He shifts them to one side. His desk is covered with books, articles, piles and piles of paper, seemingly left in no order. His shelves are overflowing with texts and journals, stuffed into every available space. He looks across at Alice and for a moment, I think he is a little like Andy Warhol, smooth skin and a shock of white hair.

‘Well,’ he says, and his voice is soft. ‘I’m afraid the results aren’t good.’

I glance at her, but her eyes are turned towards him.

‘Oh.’ It is the only word she utters.

‘As you know, the test is broad ranging — covering memory, capacity to focus on a task, capacity to follow a logical progression, and so on. And the results are calibrated according to your education and professional background. We also bear in mind the stress of the test itself.’

Cut to the chase, I think, but when I glance at Alice again, I can see she isn’t wanting him to get to the end result. She is listening carefully, leaning forward slightly.

‘I was having a bad day,’ she tells him. ‘I hadn’t slept very well.’

‘Still,’ he says softly, ‘I’m afraid the results in all areas were not good.’

She nods, gaze now fixed on her hands.

It seems she has Alzheimer’s. The patterns point strongly in that direction.

‘But you don’t know for sure?’ she asks.

He smiles. ‘There are further tests we can do, but the indications are such that I’m not sure they’ll be worth your while.’

I take Alice’s hand in my own, each bone brittle like a bird’s.

‘Is there anything I can do — to fix it?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I whisper, and across the desk from me, Professor Brewster is shaking his head.

‘But we can try and slow it down,’ he says. ‘There are drugs that do have some effect. You have to qualify, and we trial you on them for six months. If the results are positive, you’ll continue to get them under the PBS.’

‘How do I qualify?’

She needs to do another memory test, just a simple one, here with him, and if her results are low enough, he can start her immediately.

She sits bolt upright, ready. ‘Well, let’s do it,’ she tells him.

‘Are you sure you want to do it now?’ I ask.

She nods.

He has the questions on a form. What day of the week is it? What month? The year? The season? I am going to say three words to you: apple, pen and cup. At the end of the test I will ask you to repeat these to me. Count from a hundred backwards in multiples of seven. Spell ‘world’ backwards. I’m going to show you a shape and I want you to copy it on this piece of paper. And now, the three words, can you repeat them?

I listen as Alice answers all the questions, apart from the three words and copying the shape, correctly. I’m astounded.

Professor Brewster shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid you did too well,’ he says.

Alice looks confused.

‘We wanted you to do badly, so you could get the drug,’ I explain.

Still she doesn’t understand.

Then I glance down to see that she has answers written on the skin just above her knee — the date, the multiples of seven, even ‘world’ spelt backwards. She knows the questions they ask — from her visit to the neuropsychologist, probably earlier visits with him, perhaps even the GP. And I know she has been asking her friends about common memory questions, no doubt taking notes.

‘You weren’t meant to cheat.’ I laugh feebly and point at her leg.

Professor Brewster shakes his head, his smile slight as he ticks the box that says she’s eligible, and for the first time, I smile back at him.

Tom and I are the only two at the mediation.

We shake hands and he cannot look me in the eye. His skin is dry and flaky, his face covered with a fine red rash, and I wonder whether he has caught the virus that has been in the news, although I had assumed it only affected children.

‘You don’t look well,’ I tell him and he flinches slightly.

The mediator explains the process to us — Tom has been appointed to represent the wishes of all of Johannes’ children.

‘Except me,’ I add.

She nods. ‘Of course.’

We each have time to speak, to explain our perspective on the dispute and to outline what we want and why. The aim of the process is to find a solution that we both feel we can agree to.

Two hours later we leave with nothing resolved.

In the lift Tom asks me why I am being so intransient. I resist the urge to ask the same of him. Instead I tell him that I feel I am in the right.

‘He never gave me or Alice anything. This is reparation.’

He doesn’t reply.

‘Besides,’ I add. ‘I need the money.’

That night I pick up Alice and we drive out to Johannes’ house. I haven’t been there since the funeral.

The tree is still lying across the yard, the fence crushed beneath its weight, and I have to take Alice’s hand and guide her carefully in the darkness. We sit on the back verandah and look down to the harbour in the distance, the reflection of the lights shivering in the oily water.

‘Did you love him?’ I ask Alice.

She doesn’t reply immediately but when she does, she is, as she usually is, surprisingly lucid in discussing emotions. ‘I was young. He was older and handsome. I was bored. It was thrilling. It wasn’t until I had you that I grew up, and I realised that what we had wasn’t love, nor was it exciting. But I was caught. He was your father, even if he didn’t behave like one, so I wasn’t as hard on him as early as I should have been.’

She closes her eyes for a moment.

‘He wrote to me before he died. He told me he was sorry for how he treated us both, you in particular. He said he wanted to make up for it. I suppose that’s why he left you the house.’

I ask her if she still has the letter. ‘It could be useful,’ I say.

She isn’t sure.

‘I thought we could live here,’ I tell her.

She shakes her head. ‘I have Alzheimer’s,’ she tells me. ‘Caring for me will get too difficult.’

Lightning flashes out on the harbour, a silver slash, followed moments later by a deep rumble of thunder.

‘Maybe it always storms here,’ Alice says, and she looks at me, querying whether this is possible.

‘Perhaps,’ I say.

The next night, Timothy, one of my father’s other sons, calls me.

‘A neighbour reported that you were at my father’s house,’ he says. ‘What right do you have? What right?’

I hang up on him.

Dear Professor Brewster

How much longer do I have with my mother?

Ella

A month before the hearing is due to commence, Tom is admitted to hospital.

Alice and I are having a coffee, sitting by the window that overlooks the emergency drop off, when I see Gretchen at the cafeteria fridge. She is holding the door open, unable to make her selection, a tin of iced tea in one hand.

‘The world is dying because of people like you,’ the customer behind her says. ‘You act as though we have endless energy to burn. Iced tea or juice? Iced tea or juice? There won’t be either when you’ve finished contributing to global warming.’

‘Oh fuck off,’ Gretchen says and slams the door shut.

It is Alice who approaches her, who asks her why she’s here. I don’t dare.

Gretchen tells her that Tom was admitted last night. He cannot breathe without a respirator, he has lost all feeling in his limbs, and his entire body is covered in the rash. The doctors don’t know why, she says.

She is crying as she speaks, and I watch in surprise as Alice hugs her.

‘I’m scared he’s not going to make it.’ Gretchen’s sob is deep, guttural, enough to make the woman at the table closest to her gulp her tea a little too loudly.

I am scared he won’t want to see us, but Alice tells me not to be ridiculous.

‘You played together as children. There’s been enough fighting. It’s time to put it to one side.’

When Gretchen asks why we are here, Alice looks at her directly. ‘I’m seeing my neurologist,’ she says. ‘I have Alzheimer’s.’

Her answer is so crisp and clear it is difficult to believe that there is anything wrong with her, but only moments earlier, she had asked me, once again, if I remembered when she, Alice, was a baby, unable to comprehend that this was an impossibility.

‘Oh dear,’ Gretchen says, but I can tell she hasn’t really listened, her mind is on Tom. Alice is old, and old people always have something wrong with them.

Tom is asleep when we go to his room. His daughter is sitting with him. I can see she is apprehensive about my presence, but Alice assures her we are just here to send our love and wish him all the best. She goes over to Tom’s bed and takes his hand, stroking it for a moment.

‘He’s lucky to have you here,’ she tells his daughter.

‘If I can get you anything,’ I say uselessly to Gretchen as we leave.

She doesn’t even look up.

‘Now what am I going to do about the court case?’ I ask Alice. ‘I feel like a terrible heel if I keep going.’

‘What court case?’ she asks, her eyes clouded again, her hand tight on my arm as she asks me to walk a little more slowly. ‘Where are we going? Home?’

A week later my lawyer calls with a settlement offer. I am to get a quarter of the estate, with the rest of Johannes’ children to split the remainder between them.

‘I would advise you to take it,’ she says. ‘There’s no guarantee you’ll get any better if we went to trial, and the costs would be significant.’

I tell her I need a little time to think, and she says they have given me twenty-four hours.

I am at work, a report detailing the rise in catastrophic weather events in front of me, numbers ready to be distilled into a press release that no one will want to read. Outside the day is perfect: warm and still, the sky a sharp turquoise.

I wish I could talk to Alice about the offer, but I know the numbers would not make sense to her, and if it was a bad day, she would not even know what the court case was about or why I was in dispute with my half-siblings, and then she would become anxious. She worries now, picking like a small bird at each possibility — what happens if she is not home when the meals I have arranged for her arrive, what will she do with the food she buys for herself if there is not enough room in the fridge, what if she puts the heavy blanket on the bed and it is hot, does she have a heart problem if she finds it difficult to breathe, who will look after her cat when she dies?

I am exhausted.

I call the lawyer back ten minutes later and tell her I will take their offer.

‘You’ve made the right decision,’ she says. ‘I’ll let you know when all the papers are ready to sign.’

I text Gretchen to find out how Tom is, and she replies with two words only: the same.

I send another feeble message offering generic help if she needs anything, knowing she won’t call on me.

They all hate me, but it’s not as though they were ever really my friends, let alone family. It’s not as though I’ve lost anything concrete — only the possibility of a relationship with them, and perhaps that possibility hasn’t even been lost, only diminished. And did I really want that anyway? I don’t know. But I do know that on the bad days with Alice, I wish I had brothers and sisters, a father, even cousins.

‘Why did you never meet anyone else?’ I ask her.

She tells me she was too busy working and looking after me. There is no accusation in her tone nor a desire to incite guilt, not even when she goes on to remind me that she was a single mother, without much support.

‘There were a couple of men,’ she says wistfully. ‘But I don’t think they were keen on taking on a child.’

She asks me what I intend to do with the $500 I inherited from Johannes.

I don’t correct her as to the amount.

Once I would have liked to buy somewhere to live, somewhere far away where the air is clean and I could grow food and pretend that the world isn’t crumbling around me. But life has changed. I will need the money for Alice’s care.

‘Buy a house,’ I tell her. ‘Invest it wisely. Put a little aside for fun.’ I list everything I think she wants to hear, expecting her to nod in agreement, but instead she just turns to the television and switches it on, the sound of the dialogue drowning out my voice, her eyes fixed on the screen.

This is what she does now, disappears; usually just for a few minutes, but often enough to make me realise we are at the beginning of a very long farewell. I put a blanket around her and clear our dinner plates, washing up under the dim light of her kitchen.

Dear Professor Brewster

Is it inevitable that Alice will go into a home? And if it is, how will I know when it’s time?

We are gradually getting used to things she can no longer do for herself, basic tasks such as cooking and cleaning and even showering slowly slipping away. Sleep now seems to be going. I think she lies awake most nights. Sometimes she gets up and walks the streets, and then she complains of how tired she is during the day, wanting only to nap.

I have heard that people with Alzheimer’s often become incontinent, or is that they forget to go to the toilet when they need to? I’m not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. But when does all this add up to enough, when is it neglect to leave her at home on her own?

She tells me she can’t bear the thought of leaving her flat, of going to a place where she will wait to die. And so I leave her there but I feel so guilty, that I am being a bad daughter. Is there a line that you can identify for me, a place that you can say: okay, now we are here, it’s time?

I know you won’t answer me, we seem to have moved way past that point, even I’m aware of this.

So why do I write?

I need to think about that.

Ella

The time comes with more clarity than I expect.

In the middle of the night, one of Alice’s neighbours calls to tell me she fell in the garden. He has rung an ambulance and she is on her way to emergency.

The television screens in the hospital show the floods in Queensland, rising waters the colour of old coffee swirling and lapping as rivers burst their banks and rush down streets; furniture, clothing, garden equipment, all detritus now, swept up in the filthy flow. Standing in a yellow raincoat an old woman sobs: ‘I can’t take it anymore,’ she says.

Alice is in a bed, her skin the colour of dirty paper, her eyes closed. In her hand she has a morphine button, which she is meant to push when the pain becomes too much. I’m not sure if she understood the instructions, but as she does not seem to be grimacing, I assume she has been dosing herself.

Apparently she has hit her head, and blood needs to be drained from her brain.

‘She has Alzheimer’s,’ I tell anyone who will listen, and there aren’t many who are all that keen.

The surgeon is younger than I am, and he has little patience with my concerns as I nudge at the larger question — should we be operating? If we don’t, what are the ramifications? Would she die or would she just continue to live with both dementia and brain damage from the fall?

Somebody help me, I whisper to myself in the bathroom. I can’t do this on my own.

And then I remember that I have his mobile number.

Dear Professor Brewster,

I know I have been writing to you more than I should but Alice has had a fall and is about to operated on. I would really appreciate your advice.

Ella.

‘He’s coming,’ I tell Alice. ‘He’ll help us,’ I say.

But of course he doesn’t, and I can only watch as they wheel her into theatre, knowing I have been unable to ask what needed to be asked, let alone say that this is it: the end of the line.

And so, when he does arrive, the deed is done. The blood has been drained, and with it we have lost much of her. She does not know us, or even herself, and he tells me he is very sorry it has come to this.

‘She was doing so well,’ he says.

I just nod.

And then I cannot help myself, I start to cry, and as I do so, I tell him that this is what she was always terrified of, and I failed to protect her. ‘Her mother had Alzheimer’s,’ I say. ‘And her grandmother. She saw them both end up completely gaga. She told me to put a pillow over her head if she was ever diagnosed.’ I shake my head. ‘And to never let her end up in a nursing home. I’ve broken both promises now.’

He remains by the door, awkward and silent, waiting for me to finish.

At least I have the money to find her a moderately decent place, I think.

I tell him that I promise not to write anymore. I apologise if I’ve crossed a line with my letters.

He smiles at me, gently now, kinder than I have seen him be. Behind him the rain lashes at the windows, the wind howls, and the world is once again going to hell in a handbasket.

‘But can I ask you one more question?’ Not that he’s answered any of my others, I think. ‘Can you see Alzheimer’s before it’s evident? I read you could. Up to twenty years before there are any signs.’

He nods.

‘So it could be in there now?’ I tap at my skull.

‘It could be,’ he says. He turns to look out the window for a moment. ‘But I’m not sure what point there is in detecting catastrophe long before it eventuates. Unless there is a sure means of diverting it. Besides anything could happen in the meantime. Anything at all.’

And so there it is, I think as I kiss Alice goodbye.

‘I’ll be back to see you in the morning,’ I say, but she doesn’t even register me.

She’s gone, I think, and I am right behind her marching towards a line I won’t know how to recognise. And do I really want to know? Do we ever want to know? Even when the truth is so close as to be incontrovertible, we frequently do our best to look the other way, hoping, hoping that this isn’t happening, we’re not living it already, and that tomorrow will continue to dawn, another day: clear, sweet, and unremarkable.