So, this is it ...this is where it was all leading to. They had been moving him towards it for the last year, but in recent months the insistence had been greater. It’s for your own good Dad, they had said. What do they know about my good, thought Jack. I belong here. I belong here with my Rita, with my memories. We had a good life here – sixty-three years together. He stood looking out of the kitchen window. In his mind’s eye he could see his Rita sitting in the blue striped deckchair in the shade of the old pear tree. She loved that spot. Every year, when the chill of winter gave way to the gentle warmth of spring she would say ‘soon be time Jack, not long now’. Every year he would go out to the garage and get her blue striped chair down from the hook on the wall where it had been hanging all winter, waiting for this moment. He would dust off the winter’s worth of cobwebs and take it to its place by the pear tree.

Doctor McFadyen had always been firm with his instruction – Jack, Rita must have as much fresh air as possible. You have a beautiful garden, get her out there to enjoy it. And so it was. For many afternoons Rita would sit in her chair, tartan blanket over her knees, reading her gardening books, a dusty snowfall of icing sugar trailing all the way down to the box of Turkish delight on her lap.

Jack remembered back to when their Peter was little, he could see the boy playing chase with their two mischievous puppies ...round and round his mother’s chair, shrieks of laughter then Peter collapsing in a heap with the excited dogs clambering all over him, licking his face and barking with delight. How Rita loved those times and, looking back, how short they seemed. Peter grew up and moved away – an inevitability.

Towards the end, when Rita became more frail, Jack would carry her out to her chair. She still so enjoyed their afternoons together. She was never a burden, never complained. Then, quite suddenly, one day she was gone. Jack’s world fell apart.

He struggled on in the house. Feelings of anger, guilt and a terrible emptiness overwhelmed him. He did the best he could but everything became such a chore. He didn’t go out – why bother, there was no one to share the pleasure with. He began to miss meals, cooking for one seemed pointless. Gradually, over time, Jack retreated into himself, hardly communicating with anybody. Peter and Marion became increasingly concerned and so for that reason the decision was made – he would have to go into a home.

He was still looking out of the window, lost in his thoughts of years gone by, when Peter turned the key in the lock and came into the kitchen. Ready Dad? he asked.