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Nottingham University when Granny became senile.
    Susan was about nine when it started to get really bad. She had to take her turn watching that Granny didn’t burn herself on the stove, let the bath run over, or wander down to the river at the bottom of the garden and fall in.
    It was as though an ever-thickening dark cloud had come down on their house. All family outings stopped, her mother became increasingly harassed and edgy, her father seemed to withdraw to his office or study, and Susan often felt very alone and even neglected. Having other children round to play was out of the question, as her parents seemed fearful of anyone else finding out that Granny was slowly becoming barmy.
    If it hadn’t been for her father taking her out shooting at weekends, Susan wouldn’t really have had anything in her life except school and helping with the chores. She wasn’t all that keen on shooting, it seemed cruel to kill birds and rabbits, but she was a surprisingly good shot, and she liked hearing her father boast about it to friends he met while they were out shooting.
    That was probably why Beth became so important to her in the next few years. Writing to her and thinking about her filled the void left when her mother no longer had time to take her out, play board games with her, and teach her to sew and cook. When the other girls at school left her out of things because she never invited them to her house, she could tell herself they’d all be green with envy if they had a friend like Beth.
    But Granny’s dementia accelerated very quickly, and soon she was unable to remember anything. She took to wandering around at night shouting, throwing food on the floor and talking gibberish. Then finally she became doubly incontinent too. Father seemed to stay longer and longer at the office during the week and he stopped taking Susan shooting with him at the weekends because he said her mother needed her help. By the time she was thirteen she was doing all the shopping, the cleaning and the ironing. She hated Granny for making all their lives so miserable.
    Susan could appreciate now that her grandmother was actually suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. But back in the Sixties, if it even had a name, no one used it, or had any real understanding of the problems that went with it, or even appreciated it was a disease. People suffering from it were either whisked away to a mental asylum, or hidden away by their families because of the stigma attached to it.
    Without any explanation from anyone, as a young girl, Susan felt nothing but disgust and irritation that one old lady could create so much havoc. She could remember gagging at the smell in the house when she came in from school, feeling revolted when Granny spat out the food her mother spooned into her mouth, and wondering why her mother didn’t agree to put her into a home as her father so often pleaded with her to do.
    Martin seldom came home any more, he said he had better things to do than spend weekends in a lunatic asylum. He had always been nasty to Susan, her whole childhood had been overshadowed by his bullying, but she remembered being very shocked that he should say something so cruel to their mother. After all, she couldn’t help how Granny was. Yet all the same she agreed with Martin in some respects, she would have given anything to have been packed off to boarding school so she could escape too.
    From fourteen onwards Susan had no time to go to the library, for walks or bike rides; as soon as she got in from school there were too many other jobs to do and all weekend there were more. Sometimes she was even kept home from school when her mother felt she couldn’t face yet another day on her own with Granny.
    She remembered how one afternoon she was sitting with Granny while her mother quickly had a bath. The old lady was rocking backwards and forwards in her chair, making terrifying noises, and Susan wondered how she could possibly get away to see Beth that