‘Do you know who I am?’ said the voice belonging to the lady who used to be my mother, crossly, at the end of the phone line.

The truthful answer is no. Since the dementia took hold, a hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body.

A hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body

A hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body

No matter what I do, no matter how many times I ring or visit her, this person who used to be my mother is always cross and disappointed.

‘Oh, you’re alive are you!’ the strange voice barks, before asking me what I’m up to, with a sarcastic edge. Whatever I tell her I’m doing, even if I say I’m lying down with a headache, she snaps back: ‘That’s nice for you. You enjoy!’

This time, however, there was an added sharpness to her voice as she demanded: ‘Do you remember me? Hmm?’

‘Of course I do, Mum,’ I said. ‘We speak every day. We spoke yesterday. I’ll be with you this weekend.’ And I already knew that when I got there, it wouldn’t make her happy.

A week earlier, the builder boyfriend took the train from London to Coventry to visit my parents while he was in the UK. He looked at a fallen-down garden fence they were worrying about, had dinner with them and stayed overnight.

But she has no memory of this. In her mind, it is all neglect and abandonment, which is odd, because we’ve always been a close-knit family and there never has been any neglect by any one of us towards another, or any........

© The Spectator