Everyone asks the question with the same eyes. Anxious, yes. Sympathetic, yes. They’d rather not ask, but they know they must.
They’ve seen me now. Time for a difficult conversation.
It’s been more than a year since my father’s trip to Rome to spend Christmas with his girlfriend. It was on Boxing Day that he fainted and fell, injured his neck and became paralysed from the head down. Countless hospitals, operations, doctors, flights and interviews later, he’s finally home in West London, albeit transformed.
Today, as we prepare to leave the house, we speak about the same things we always did.