Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Roger Penstick didn’t begrudge helping his old friend. It had been hard watching him slip into that cloudy state where the absent-minded forgetfulness that meant you couldn’t remember where your car keys were became the tormented senility that meant you could no longer remember what they were for.

At nine every morning he let himself into the small cottage Arthur called home and met his friend in the kitchen. The carers had already been, made sure he was dressed and fed and left him in his comfy chair for Roger and their morning’s constitutional.

‘Where shall we go today, mate?’ he asked, hopeful of getting some sort of reply. Occasionally he was offered a smile, sometimes a ‘Lovely sun,’ or ‘Where’s Madge?’ his long deceased wife. It mattered not. Not these days. It was all about giving him those fragments of pleasure he could still access.

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