The divine comedy of Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve come back to the empty house for the second time in the six weeks since my mother died. The last time I came back, I felt her lingering presence: benign, modest, humorous. But this time she’s absent. Alison, who came once a week to clean, told me that my mother’s last words to her were: ‘Don’t forget to clean the skirting boards behind the beds.’ My mother liked her house to be clean. She kept on top of it, wielding the vacuum cleaner when she’d reached the stage where she couldn’t stand unaided.

It’s a lovely old house on a rainswept promontory overlooking the bay. It badly needs money spent on it — the roof, the tarmac drive, a new heating system to banish the damp from an increasing number of interior walls — but she did what she could within her meagre and diminishing means to keep it up. She and my father had bought and run it as a small residential home. There are nine toilets. While she was still fit she tried twice to sell it. Once it failed to attract a buyer and once the sale fell through at the last moment. Then she was an invalid and the upheaval would have been too much. Now she’s gone and the house is once again up for sale. I’m guessing that whoever buys it eventually will do so because of the view and will knock it down and start again. This appears to be a growing trend around here now that money has decided it likes the area.

As with the last visit, I’ve come back to find out what my cancer is up to with a scheduled blood test, scan and a visit to the oncologist, Mrs God, who will give me the results and any implications for my health with satisfyingly scientific precision.