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barely remember her name. It made visiting easier.
    It was getting harder and harder visiting Mum. For a start there was the sheer loneliness of knowing that she could no longer reach her mother in the way she once had. They had been so close once, and Cat missed her mother’s wisdom. Louise would have known how Cat should deal with Mel, and Cat felt all at sea without her support. Noel was much more relaxed about it. He too had been a rebel in his teens and kept telling Cat that Mel would get over it, which was probably true. But, Cat felt a massive failure for not having managed to create the same strong mother and daughter bond she’d enjoyed with Louise before her illness. Guiltily, she felt she’d let Mel down somehow, and the further Mel retreated from her, the less certain Cat was that she would ever get her back.
    Their latest row had been about Mel’s mock results which, as predicted, were abysmal. Mel’s response to being told off was to spend even more hours out of the house, presumably at Karen’s, though Cat never knew if she was there, because Mel barely deigned to tell her. Andy’s name hadn’t been mentioned again, and if Cat tried to broach the subject, Mel clammed up, leaving Cat worrying why her daughter was being so secretive about it. Short of locking her in her room to prevent her going out, Cat didn’t know what more she and Noel could do.
    Cat and Ruby knocked on Louise’s door, and found her sitting in her chair, rocking back and forth slightly, as was her wont.
    ‘Hallo, dear,’ said Louise with unseeing eyes. ‘How nice of you to come. I’m waiting for my daughter, she’ll be here soon.’
    ‘I am your daughter,’ said Cat, holding up the picture of the family which she kept by the bed for this express purpose. ‘See, here I am, it’s Cat. And here’s Ruby, your granddaughter.’
    ‘What, this little girl?’ said Louise. ‘My granddaughter? Well I never.’
    ‘Hallo Granny,’ said Ruby, ‘I made you a picture.’
    Cat could have hugged her for taking it in her stride.
    ‘How lovely. What a kind little girl you are,’ said Louise, ‘My granddaughter. Amazing.’
    Ruby rolled her eyes at Cat, and said, ‘Yes, Granny,’ before proceeding to rattle off a manic account of her week, which mainly consisted of the fact that Maisie Cordwell was really mean and it was unfair the boys got to play football and the girls didn’t.
    Towards the end of her visit, Louise asked to go in the lounge.
    ‘I need to see Alfie,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a date.’
    Cat grinned. One of the few good things to come out of Louise’s condition recently had been meeting up with Alfie, a fellow Alzheimer’s patient. They could barely remember each other’s names, but they seemed to get on like a house on fire.
    ‘Of course you do,’ said Cat. ‘Here, let’s take you down.’
    Taking her mum’s arm, she gently led her downstairs to the lounge where several of the residents were assembled to hear the piano being played by an equally elderly gentleman.
    Alfie, a dapper eighty-year-old, whose tidy appearance belied the vagueness of his mind, came straight up to Louise and pecked her on the cheek.
    ‘Hello me darling,’ he said. ‘Let me take you on a spin around the room,’ and with that he took Louise into his arms, and led her in a waltz, lustily and tunelessly singing ‘Daisy Daisy, give me your answer do!’, while Louise spun round with him looking pink and flustered. She’d clearly forgotten they were there. Cat grinned. ‘Time to go, Ruby,’ she said, ‘I don’t think Granny needs us anymore.’ It wasn’t all bad. Mum was safe and warm and well cared for. Things could be a lot worse.
    Marianne rushed into the staffroom, five minutes late for the staff meeting, conscious that her curly dark hair was rebelliously falling out of the clips which she’d shoved back into them, after Harry pulled them out just before she’d left for work. She was late because Daisy had smeared