At eighty my stomach grew so large my family got frightened. The scan found something — and then a twelve-year-old record with my late husband’s name on it, and a folder called PROJECT AGNES.

I explained that as well. I had been off my food since a bad winter and I had not been bothering to cook properly for one.

In 2023 my waistband went and I bought two sizes up at the place on Carrow Street.

I explained that in the changing room, out loud, to myself. I was seventy-seven. Everybody’s does.

In the August of this year I stopped being able to reach the bottom oven shelf, and I explained that to myself in the kitchen, out loud, on my own.

Four times in seven years.

Four separate opportunities to stand in my own kitchen and decide that something was happening to me that I could not account for.

And every single time, I found one.

Because the alternative was reaching into that drawer, taking out a cream envelope, and opening a letter my husband had written specifically for the worst day of my life.