28 days later I stood under the chestnut tree looking up at the frayed ends of an old rope. My boots crunched on the bones and detritus at the foot of the tree. 28 days earlier I had looked up at the same rope, hands covered in blood and turned to see the intent shadow of a hungry animal in the bushes, waiting for a much needed feast.

On the morning of that day, I had spent some time preparing myself for the dreaded visit. Hair washed and dried, make up applied, clothing carefully chosen so as to draw as little attention, negative or positive, as possible. As usual I was full of good intent, determined to be lovely and calm. We would chat and take a short walk, idly observing the neighbours’ houses. I would not rise to any ignorant statements, thoughtless questions or relentless inanity. I would not be irked by the repeated nostalgic anecdotes that I had heard a million times before, or the brainless humming that filled any dead air.

And so it was…to begin with. I got her coat, loaded her too big mobility aid into the too small boot, wrangled her arthritic legs into the front seat and we set off on our jolly. By the time we got to the end of the road, having endured 3 interstitial tuneless humming sessions, a comment on my weight and 2 completely uninformed pronouncements on the state of young people today, I felt something inside me fray, there was a loosening in my very being, a fracture in the carapace of my psyche.

By the time we got to the parking spot near the small woodland, my spirit was crushed. I think it was hearing about the time she wore a trouser suit to the pub for the first time in 1974 that broke me. I became at that point an automaton, going through the motions to an inevitable conclusion. I got her out of the car and we set off down a different path than usual, “ just for a change”. It was a quiet day, there were no other people around, all I could hear were the birds and the distant hum of the motorway. I saw her lips moving but she had ceased to exist to all intents and purposes.

After walking for 20 minutes we came to the big chestnut tree. As she started to tell me yet again about the time that her and her husband had carved their initials in the tree when they were teenagers, back in the good old days, before all the immigrants and the yobs , I lifted the monkey wrench I had taken from the boot of my car and hefted it across the back of her head. As she lay on the mossy path, blood oozing from the wound, I tied the old rope around her neck and with the help of her walker as a platform, pulled her wizened old body up, so that she hung like a ragdoll from the lowest branch, her swollen feet brushing against the leaf mould.

28 days later I remembered.