My father stopped speaking to me when I dropped out of medical school to care for my sick boyfriend. Five years later he drove over to take me home — and the moment he walked into our front room he stopped mid-sentence and said this can’t be real.

In the second year I did a bridging programme two evenings a week and one Saturday a month. Kes could be alone by then for about six hours if the day had gone well, and there were four occasions when it had not gone well and I left a lecture at the interval and drove home.

Then the accelerated nursing route, then licensure, then two years in a hospice as a staff nurse on nights, which is where I learned the thing I actually do for a living.

Then the nurse practitioner programme, which is the one that nearly finished me, and the board certification in hospice and palliative care, which I sat at twenty-nine in a testing centre in a retail park with a migraine.

Four years, part time, while running a household in which one adult was relearning how to hold things.