C.’s news is very bad – “a few months”. Of course we’ve all known this, including C. herself, since the 8th of November, the day before her surgery. The delivery of the verdict yesterday was, nevertheless, a tremendous shock.

That was Games Day, 2010, the traditional picture we always take at the end of the afternoon. C. is towards the left, framed by Greek Helen in the Macdougall jacket, leaning one way, and the niece I keep talking about, in a brown coat, leaning the other. Next to her is her sister F. (who lives in Glasgow), in a green jacket, with her husband behind and her sons beside her. C.s dear granddaughter Little C. was also there, with a boyfriend, but they had failed to grasp the importance of the picture-taking and were somewhere else.