Number of days since lockdown: 67

Number of cigarettes: 2

Number of times in the past 24 hours I’ve hoped this is all a horrible nightmare and that any minute I will wake up: too many.

There are a few ways I might have imagined Mum reacting when I broke the news to her that the hospital had just rung to say that Dad had very sadly died. Weeping, shock, even denial that it had happened. Or anger that she hadn’t been allowed to be there with him. All of them were possible.

But instead, she just said: typical of him, the selfish bastard. I always knew he’d leave me one day.

And then she asked me if I had any cigarettes and stumped off on her zimmer frame to sit in the garden.

I rang Lydia and told her about Dad and we had a little cry together. She said she would come down to visit us the next day, ie today, so we can get started on all the admin. And then we had that ridiculous sort of discussion that grieving families are having to have these days, about whether it would be alright for her to stay on the sofa and would we be able to have a funeral and would she even be allowed to hug Mum.

Just to clarify, I don’t think the rules to stop the virus spreading make losing someone any worse. That isn’t possible. They just get in the way of all the things that you would do naturally to comfort one another. And yourself. It’s one of the reasons why the behaviour of the Prime Minister and his odious advisor has caused so much anger and distress.

After I spoke to Lydia, I rang the children. They both adored their grandfather and were very sad and upset, and somehow that was a very soothing. Toby said he would like to play something at the funeral and I said that would be lovely, even though at that stage I wasn’t even sure if we would be having a funeral. And he said he would come round and see Grandma over the weekend, and Charlotte said she would come down in the week, now that the rules for visiting in the garden have been relaxed.

It was getting dark when I took Mum out a cup of tea and some biscuits. I sat down next to her and said If you haven’t smoked all those cigarettes, please may I have one? And she handed me the almost empty pack in silence. We sat there for a while and then I said that Lydia would be coming down tomorrow.

And she said, I hope she spares me one of her bereavement lectures.

And I said, oh Mum, she loves you very much.

And she said, I know that Sadie. I just find kindness very difficult to accept.

And I thought, yes I know you do, Mum, and that is the hardest things about being one of your daughters.

And then she said, I have been thinking about Ruth.

And I said, oh?

And she said, yes, and I have been wishing I had a faith because then I might believe that she and your father had gone to a better place. But I don’t. And now I’m going to bed.

Which she did. And I remembered someone once telling me that losing a parent is actually a double loss, because for a while, the other parent is lost to you too, at a time when you need them most. But that with any luck they will be back one day.

And I wondered if Mum would ever be back.

In the morning I went to the hospital and collected my father’s death certificate from a lady wearing a mask and blue disposable gloves. And then I went home and waited for the cavalry to arrive in her electric chariot.

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