I wrap her warmly, wheel her chair down the ramp to the small patio outside her room. I take both of her hands in mine and lift her to her feet. We walk slowly and cautiously out into the dusk and I settle her and tuck a rug about her hips, across her stomach. I pull the zip of her fleece high. She is so thin now, the chill whips straight through her.

What if we could recast dementia as a place of make believe and make up? Would that be a happy place to escape to, to run way from confusion and incontinence and lost words and dropped ones? Couldn’t we conjure it as a golden hour in her twilight ones?

‘Sam says I have a daughter called Anthea. I don’t.’

For a second, a single second, I think my heart stops, and then I say, ‘You do, mum: that’s me; I’m Anthea’ and then, ‘to make myself feel better, to take the sting out of all this, to make Mum laugh, I say, ‘I’m your favourite child, remember.’