For Gabrielle Carey, the sight of her mother’s bare feet, soles facing, was almost unbearable. Naked and defenceless, she had never seen them from that angle before. Other parts of a loved one’s anatomy could produce such a feeling – the nape of a beloved neck or an innocent elbow – but on this occasion it was the old feet projecting from the elderly and suddenly compromised body, strapped to a trolley, awaiting a CT scan. The daughter ‘didn’t quite know what to do’, which turns out to be a revealing remark. She wonders if she should stroke her arm or not, but before offering any such support she is asked to leave the cubicle.

Joan Carey, née Ferguson, who believed she was perfectly fine, was to have her brain scanned. She considered the entire procedure a waste of time and money. ‘A wicked waste’ she called it, a phrase familiar from the author’s Sydney childhood. Joan’s behaviour and reactions, always a combination of good manners and thrift, had recently changed noticeably. In a life filled with intelligent good works and service to others, suddenly she seemed bewildered, puzzled and doddery. Forgetful, she had started to miss appointments, lose things and appear vague and distracted. Such manifestations of absent-mindedness are familiar to many with elderly parents; others are well aware of these problems through the media. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are facts of modern life.