Alex eased the door of her mother’s room closed and stood in the corridor for a moment, trying to make sense of the day that lay behind her. She could never bring herself to look back before closing the door, despite the guilt her reluctance brought. Death was already in the room. It had been there with them for months now, settling itself in the corner and overseeing every hour Alex and her mother had shared together. It had a certain smell, a grey colour; a sound she could hear like a high-pitched ringing in her head, refusing to let its presence be forgotten.

She leaned against the wall and exhaled slowly, closing her eyes to press back the swell of headache that had formed at her temples. There was a buzzer sounding somewhere further along the corridor, and Alex found that if she focused hard enough on the white noise of her brain the buzzing became distant, as though she was no longer inside the building. She felt light-headed, her whole body made somehow weightless by the exhaustion that had been building over the previous few weeks, all leading to what she knew would be inevitable.

‘Alex?’

Her eyes snapped open. The nurse on duty was standing alongside her, a forced smile spread on her face.

‘You OK?’

Alex nodded and straightened. She pushed back her hair, awkwardly attempting to make herself more presentable. ‘Did the doctor come this morning?’

The nurse nodded. ‘Shall we go to the office?’

Alex followed, but her heart had sunk at the words. Going to the office never meant anything but bad news, yet she knew that nothing else could be expected. Bad news lingered in every corner.

She had been watching her mother die for over a year now. Her brain was shutting down in sections, like a glass office block in which the lights were turned off one by one before the close of day. It was cruelly painful to watch. Although they had had a difficult relationship at the best of times, she was all the family Alex had left. Losing her meant losing her only link to the past. Once she was gone, what would be left?

She followed the nurse down the corridor to the office, already knowing what would be said once the door was closed. Knowing didn’t make it any easier. She had heard the words before – there had been previous scares in which she had been told to prepare herself – and yet this time something already felt altered. They had been offered extra lives, but they had all been used up.

As with every other time, she wished they could go back and undo the things they’d said years earlier; try and do things differently, better this time.

‘The chest infection isn’t clearing up in the way we’d hoped,’ the nurse said, closing the door behind them.

Alex nodded. She wasn’t sure what else she could do. The nurse gestured to a chair and Alex sat silently.

‘You know your mother’s medication was altered a fortnight ago.’

She nodded again. She had seen the doctor that week and he had prepared her for what was coming. He hadn’t sugar-coated anything, and Alex had been grateful for that. She didn’t need the softness of lies, no matter how well intentioned they might be.

Her mother wasn’t living; this couldn’t be called a life. She slept much of the time now, and when she was awake, she was mostly distressed. Her dementia brought with it a whole range of hallucinations: strange people in the bed beside her; children watching from the windowsill; animals on top of the television. They were alarming and confusing, and she spent most of her waking hours arguing with people who weren’t there. She ate, occasionally, but recently she had stopped deriving any kind of pleasure from even that. What sort of life was this to cling on to?

‘An infection always makes the dementia symptoms worse,’ the nurse continued. ‘You’ve seen this for yourself over the past couple of weeks. The anxiety, the confusion … these have all been exacerbated by it.’

‘You’re not expecting her to pull through this one, are you?’

The nurse opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. We’ve really done everything we can. The doctors have been altering her medications for a while now, but the deterioration in her condition has been so rapid since Easter. Antibiotics just aren’t having an effect any more.’

‘You don’t have to apologise.’

For the first time, Alex meant it. Acceptance had been difficult. Watching her mother’s decline had been slow and painful: the worst thing she had ever had to witness. It had been degrading and relentless, and she wouldn’t have wished it upon anyone. For months she had been searching for someone to blame, someone she could hold responsible for what was happening, as though finding fault might somehow ease the pain. But it wouldn’t, she realised that now.

And for the first time, she realised that letting her mother go would be the kindest thing they could all do for her.

‘How long are we talking?’ she asked.

The nurse hesitated. Alex caught her eye, willing an honest response.

‘The doctor thinks maybe days … a couple of weeks at the most. I really am so sorry.’

Alex stood. There was nothing else to talk about, and staying there was only making things more difficult for both of them. She thanked the nurse – listening without really hearing when the woman offered her time and support should she ever need it – and left the office, making her way straight to the exit. She pressed a code into the keypad at the door and let herself out into the car park, driving away from the building without looking back.

It was only when she stopped the car a couple of streets away that Alex allowed the tears to flow. It was something she rarely did – something she hadn’t done for months – but occasionally the need to cry overwhelmed her, as though everything she had kept inside her was permitted a moment of victory that she found herself unwilling to fight against. And she realised even before the tears came that she was mourning something that had never truly existed. She and her mother had never been particularly close; there had been times when they hadn’t even liked one another, and when both had openly admitted it. Her mother had never forgiven Alex for giving up on her marriage. Alex had never forgiven her mother for doing all she could to help that marriage meet its final demise. The two of them had spent their last years together bitterly resenting the other, dancing awkward circles around one another in order to avoid having to confront the truth.

Yet for that past year she had been mourning her mother; mourning, she realised now, the relationship she wished she’d once had with her.