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right?” she says, walking off towards the car park.
    I stay rooted to the spot, waiting for her to stop and turn around, waiting for her to acknowledge the unsaid, but when she doesn’t I pick up my bag and follow her.
    The little redbrick cottage where my mother was raised has a white front door and pink roses climbing around the windows. It is also where I spent the first six months of my life, growing up in the warm bosom of my extended family, being cared for by my teenage mother, my grandmother and my grandfather. They were happy times, apparently, with everybody doting on me. Of course I have no recollection of any of this, but the place felt oddly familiar when I helped my mother move in here three years ago.
    â€œOf course it feels familiar,” said my mother as we unpacked the van, “you were born here.”
    â€œYes, but I don’t remember that, do I?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter whether you remember it or not. It’s still part of who you are. As far as your psyche is concerned this is where you belong. You’re like a salmon that’s instinctively found its way home.”
    â€œIn that case I should be due to drop dead any minute now.”
    â€œI don’t think you’ll be the one doing that, Dear,” she muttered, struggling to unload a large pot plant.
    It was the one time I heard her make reference to her illness. I wanted to stop her, grab her by the shoulders, tell her it was okay to talk about it, that I wanted to talk about it, but I was so taken aback that I just stood there hugging a deep-fat fryer while she staggered up the path, swamped under the leaves of an enormous yucca plant.
    Inside the cottage is tight and low ceilinged, but extremely cosy. There’s an open fireplace in the lounge, original wooden beams and an Aga in the kitchen which my mother adores. The long garden is overflowing with leafy green vegetables, fruit trees and beanpoles. The patio is crammed with pots spilling over with berries and herbs. And past all this chaos, near the end of the garden, I can see the little orchard of apple trees with their fruit-laden boughs drooping to the ground. It’s like a jungle out there.
    â€œIt’s looking a little overgrown,” my mother admits, as we stand on the patio in the early-evening sunshine, in between a ceramic pot growing rocket leaves and an old tin bucket that’s spouting green peppers. “I don’t know why but I just don’t seem to be able to keep up with it lately. I’ll get back out there tomorrow and give it a damn good tidy up.”
    I’m glad my mother’s home where she belongs. It’s where she deserves to be. The bland North London flat we used to live in never reflected anything about her. It seemed to strain against my mother’s zest for life, as if struggling to contain within its walls the energy that she radiated. It was plain and characterless, with small, square rooms and no discernible features. Here in this cottage there are secret hiding places, there is history, there are quirks and peculiarities. Every room has a story attached to it, a personality of its own. There is fresh air, light, nature and room to breathe. And above all there are roots to my mother’s past, roots which I hope will ground her, steadying her in reality as she faces the hard times ahead. I know almost nothing of her life before she had me, so skilled is she at avoiding any mention of it, but I know it was here that she grew up with her parents and a cat named Fluffy, here that she listened to records and danced in her bedroom, and here that my father came to call for her when they were dating. All of these things I know happened here, and my hope is that maybe as she nears the end of her life these memories – these real memories – will come back to her, shoving aside the fantasy world that she has created. I want my mother to be able to look back on her life with clarity, so that