The Reluctant Carer is so good at writing about the claustrophobia of being a carer,’ says Sue. Noting references to time off from caring for work, and even a holiday, Starting on a journey asks, ‘How many of us get that?’ All of this is rich territory, but Moggach’s nuanced characterisations make the subject matter really come alive. Phoebe is “a single woman, of a certain age, and childless. This suggested an Austen-like obligation to others, but she was buggered if she’d let Robert off the hook.” Robert is married to a TV news presenter, but having been made redundant from his job in the City now worries “that if somebody cut them open they’d be appalled at what they found”. The siblings’ rivalry is vividly conveyed: “skirmishes could still erupt, especially when alcohol was involved”. William Dyce’s painting of King Lear in the Storm, from the National Gallery of Scotland. Photo by Art UK. The paramedic asks how we’ll be getting home. “I guess he shouldn’t be driving?” The paramedic shakes his head. Cab then. Cabs from now on, maybe. If we ever go out again. I get behind him and support him in a way that feels therapeutic but more closely resembles a full nelson. I signal to the owner to call an ambulance, ignore the stares of our fellow diners and ask plaintively in the old man’s ear if he’s all right, if he can hear me. Nothing.

My sister is asthmatic, still waiting on her jab, and so stays clear of things. “She’s avoiding us like the plague,” says Mum. “You’ve got the plague,” I tell her. She laughs up an inordinate amount of phlegm. Perhaps this isn’t over. Maybe it’s hardly begun. My sister has phoned Mum’s GP and the practice is one of only two in the city that are offering the second jab. “If Mum tests negative first they say she can go,” my sister reports. Mum’s positive test is from four days ago, on Saturday it will be a fortnight since her symptoms started. Maybe this is worth a go. Two jabs and she’s had it, surely that would make her bulletproof. Which would be a load off. A whole new world. What Covid couldn’t do, hospitalization has. The small amount of power, the figment, the dream, the rumour of strength that let him live at home with me and Mum and the carers, has gone. Now he can’t move. Now it takes two people to turn him over, like something on a grill. Now here he is for as long as it takes. I listened to a lot of prognoses and treatment plans, but no one ever seemed to touch on the big question – how long has he got? The senior nurse would have a kind of giggling fit if I really pressed him for some sense of how things might pan out. In the end they would refer you to a doctor who was never around. This person, they said, would have the answers. But this person is not here to tell you them. Jeff Bezos,” announces Dad admiringly, “richest man in the world!” He leans forward from the chair in which he will spend the rest of the day and perhaps his life and offers me the paper. I refuse it, saying “I know” and immediately dislike myself for doing so. The tiny mirror that bore witness to these adolescent milestones is also a favourite of my father’s. He likes to bring it with him when he goes to hospital, so he can inspect the latest indignities that time has inflicted on his scalp and face. “Why does he need it?” Mum will hiss on finding it gone again. I have tried giving him a different mirror, but he pines for the original.Her present live-in carer hails from Africa but even she says it is worse than being close to the equator. And she has a point. Sitting down and trying to talk with mum in there is like getting a workplace review from Satan. Although they do say the devil knows your name, whereas mum sometimes does not, so perhaps I am being unfair.

Forty moves from bed to breakfast table, just one of the many adventures of a Reluctant Carer. Image by Maarten van der Heuvel on Unsplash. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-11059147/The-reluctant-carer-gave-mother-father-end-life-care.html And then this place where death had been verbally banished, felt strange. But then he and I like all of us in the end, were only visiting. Every world has rules of its own. Incredible. One of those rare books that should be dispensed on prescription to every household.' - Lucy Easthope, author of When the Dust Settles The problem is compounded by the fact that she has shifted her headquarters. For years she was based in the living room, but for the last few months mum has insisted on sitting in the conservatory. Even plants struggle to survive here in the summer. If you bring her a tea and she falls asleep and fails to drink it, even after an hour here it will still be warm.

The mirror business, like so many other seemingly innocuous things that, in a younger household might submit to logic, will run and run. I have found it useful, when considering if and how to intervene in the everyday contretemps that permeate my parents’ 60-year marriage, to remember that one day, soon, there will be nothing to argue about and no one to argue with. The centre of this sonic confusion is the kitchen. Nutrition, medication, laundry – it all happens here. Adjoining it is a small bathroom, which adds to the fun. Although separated by double doors, my father is insistent on leaving these open (driven, according to my sister, by a fear of dying on the toilet like Elvis). This means that, to all intents and purposes, and certainly in terms of sound, the toilet is in the kitchen, too. What shall I do with your lunch?” asks the pub landlord. I tell him I’ll eat mine. Death is inevitable, yet it remains a sin to waste food.