‘My psychiatrist is worried what effect all this is having on me,’ says Angela. For a moment I think she’s going to illustrate by pointing to her brain, but uses her finger to push her glasses back up her nose instead. She makes as if to fold her arms, then changes her mind at the last minute, puts them in her lap – and then changes her mind again, and folds them after all, leaning forwards with her shoulders hunched, rocking imperceptibly.

I’ve only been in the same room with Angela five minutes and I have to say, I’m as worried as the psychiatrist. Angela’s face is so intensely anxious, it’s as if someone had taken a cup, drawn round it with a crayon to get the circle, roughed in two permanently arched eyebrows, a pair of thick glasses, a flared nose, a downward pointing mouth, and then below it, as an afterthought, adding an incised groove like a second mouth, to amplify the sadness of the first.

‘You’ve got a lot on your plate,’ I say. ‘Anyone would be anxious.’
‘I am anxious,’ she says. ‘I’m very anxious.’
‘It’s understandable.’

Staring at us from the armchair opposite is the source of Angela’s anxiety: her father, William – an imposing figure, despite his extreme age. William is fastidiously dressed in a buttoned-up shirt and tie, bottle green cardigan, corduroy trousers with a sharp crease down the centre of each leg, his velcro-shoes box-fresh, correctly fastened. He’s so tall and gaunt, with so many edges and angles to him, you’d hardly think he was real at all. I imagine when he gets up at the end of the evening, he simply unfolds, flap by flap, like a complicated origami figure, cushion fold, chair fold, reverse-squash fold – and shuffles away to sleep in an envelope.

He must have some mass, though. He fell on the patio a week ago, taking his wife Rose with him, landing on her and fracturing her hip. Rose ended up in hospital, of course, with the prospect of a long convalescence. The only other sibling, Angela’s brother Tommy, works away from home a great deal and can’t spare the time. And as Angela is off on long-term sickness due to her anxiety, they decided – or at least, I would think, Tommy decided – that Angela should be the one who stays with William until Rose makes it home again.

‘I just can’t keep an eye on him every single hour of every single day,’ says Angela, hopelessly.
‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘What do you think, William?’
William slowly unlaces his fingers and then holds his hands apart in a sad, what-will-be-will-be kind of way.
‘It’s difficult,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to worry anyone. But it is unfortunately the case that – for whatever reason – I have something of an issue with balance.’

I turn to Angela again, who’s staring at me with such terror it’s like we’ve been dragged to the edge of a precipice.

‘You see?’ she says.