My father had bought me three bananas.

He knows I like a banana on my muesli when I stay with them, and he had bought them the week before because I was supposed to be coming. Then work got in the way and I had to cancel. By the time I eventually arrived, the bananas were brown.

Not completely brown. Past their best.

I don’t mind them like that on muesli, and it seemed a shame to waste them, particularly as he’d bought them for me. So I had one the first morning and another the next.

On the third morning I looked at the last one.

“Oh, the last banana. I’m going to eat the last banana.”

I was talking mainly to myself. I was quite pleased. Three bananas, three breakfasts, nothing wasted.

Lolly looked at me.

“That’s not very nice of you. What if somebody else had wanted one?”

“What?”

My father came in.

“No, no, Lolly. I got those bananas specially for Eliza. She likes them in her muesli.”

And that was it.

Nothing happened.

I ate the banana.

Except, of course, something had happened.

When I was a child there had been a box of chocolates.

I can’t remember what sort they were, which is perhaps surprising considering the importance they subsequently acquired. I do remember eating the last one.

I probably shouldn’t have.

I loved chocolate. I still do. As a child, once I had started eating chocolates, the existence of another chocolate tended to be a sufficient reason for eating it. I don’t remember considering the wider social implications.

Lolly did.

I had eaten the last chocolate deliberately so that nobody else could have it.

That was what she said.

It wasn’t that I had been greedy. Greedy I could probably have managed. Children are greedy. It was the intention that was troubling.

I had apparently known somebody else might want the chocolate and had eaten it precisely for that reason.

I was selfish.

Horrible.

There were other things.

The toilet roll, for instance.

I would finish a toilet roll and not replace it.

This was true.

I would fully intend to replace it. Then I would finish going to the loo, pull my trousers up, wash my hands and leave. Somewhere between the empty cardboard tube and the bathroom door, the toilet roll ceased to exist.

I know now that I had undiagnosed ADHD. At the time I just knew I’d forgotten.

Lolly had another explanation.

“You did it deliberately. You deliberately didn’t replace the toilet roll so that I would be stuck on the toilet without any toilet paper.”

I remember being completely bewildered. I hadn’t.

“You’re such a horrible, cruel person.”

The difficulty with being a child is that when an adult tells you what you intended, they have a certain advantage.

They are the adult.

Perhaps this is why I am still careful about taking the last one.

The last biscuit. The last chocolate. The last piece of something on a plate.

I hadn’t thought about it particularly until the banana.

By then I was fifty-eight.

Lolly has dementia now.

This complicates things because dementia comes with explanations.

She doesn’t remember.

She didn’t mean it.

She gets confused.

And all of these things are true.

My father explains things.

“No, no, Lolly.”

He explains who people are and why they are there. He explains that this is their house. He explains that he is William. He explains that the bananas were bought for me.

There is a great deal of explaining.

But there are moments when something Lolly says doesn’t feel confused at all.

It feels extraordinarily familiar.

Later she asked about Claire.

Claire was coming to lunch.

I have known Claire all my life. She belongs to the landscape of my childhood, to people and houses and relationships that existed before I understood what any of them meant.

“What time is Claire coming?”

I told her.

“And when are you leaving?”

She said she needed some special time with Claire. It was important that they had time together, so they could talk.

I understood.

“I’ll go before Claire comes. Don’t worry. I know you don’t want me here.”

My father intervened.

“No, no. That’s not what she meant.”

Again, perhaps it wasn’t.

But the feeling was familiar. There had always been people with whom Lolly needed time that did not include me. Over the years the people changed, and so did my place among them.

This is the problem.

When somebody has dementia you become very careful about what things mean.

But I had been careful about what Lolly meant long before she had dementia.

When I was a child, Lolly sometimes wanted me to be her child.

I didn’t understand what that meant either.

She once told me that she and William were going to adopt me.

I went home and informed my mother.

“Mum, I’m just to let you know, William and Lolly are going to adopt me.”

My mother looked at me.

“I’m sorry, but you’re not up for adoption.”

That was the end of that, as far as my mother was concerned.

It wasn’t quite the end of it for me.

Lolly told me things.

Things about my mother. Things about my father. Things about their relationships. Adult things which I listened to because I was a child and therefore didn’t know they were adult things.

Children don’t know where the boundaries are.

That’s one of the reasons adults are supposed to.

I know that now.

I didn’t know it then.

This is what is peculiar about time.

We talk about childhood as though it were somewhere we have been. A country we’ve left. We say when I was a child and put thirty or forty or fifty years between ourselves and the person we were.

Most of the time this works perfectly well.

Then somebody says:

“That’s not very nice of you. What if somebody else had wanted one?”

And there is no fifty years.

There is no distance at all.

There is just the peculiar sensation of being accused of something you didn’t know you had done.

The adult knows that children forget toilet rolls and eat chocolates. She knows that adults shouldn’t make children responsible for adult feelings.

The child knows none of this.

The child only knows that apparently she isn’t a very nice person.

And perhaps the strangest thing is that Lolly can’t remember any of it.

She can’t remember the chocolate. She can’t remember the toilet roll. She can’t remember telling me she was going to adopt me. She can’t remember all the things she told me about my mother.

Sometimes now she can’t remember me at all.

And yet somehow she remembers us.

But I remember.

Standing there with the last banana in my hand, I realised that some part of me had been remembering for fifty years.

The Last Banana

My father had bought me three bananas.

He knows I like a banana on my muesli when I stay with them, and he had bought them the week before because I was supposed to be coming. Then work got in the way and I had to cancel. By the time I eventually arrived, the bananas were brown.

Not completely brown. Past their best.

I don’t mind them like that on muesli, and it seemed a shame to waste them, particularly as he’d bought them for me. So I had one the first morning and another the next.

On the third morning I looked at the last one.

“Oh, the last banana. I’m going to eat the last banana.”

I was talking mainly to myself. I was quite pleased. Three bananas, three breakfasts, nothing wasted.

Lolly looked at me.

“That’s not very nice of you. What if somebody else had wanted one?”

“What?”

My father came in.

“No, no, Lolly. I got those bananas specially for Eliza. She likes them in her muesli.”

And that was it.

Nothing happened.

I ate the banana.

Except, of course, something had happened.

When I was a child there had been a box of chocolates.

I can’t remember what sort they were, which is perhaps surprising considering the importance they subsequently acquired. I do remember eating the last one.

I probably shouldn’t have.

I loved chocolate. I still do. As a child, once I had started eating chocolates, the existence of another chocolate tended to be a sufficient reason for eating it. I don’t remember considering the wider social implications.

Lolly did.

I had eaten the last chocolate deliberately so that nobody else could have it.

That was what she said.

It wasn’t that I had been greedy. Greedy I could probably have managed. Children are greedy. It was the intention that was troubling.

I had apparently known somebody else might want the chocolate and had eaten it precisely for that reason.

I was selfish.

Horrible.

There were other things.

The toilet roll, for instance.

I would finish a toilet roll and not replace it.

This was true.

I would fully intend to replace it. Then I would finish going to the loo, pull my trousers up, wash my hands and leave. Somewhere between the empty cardboard tube and the bathroom door, the toilet roll ceased to exist.

I know now that I had undiagnosed ADHD. At the time I just knew I’d forgotten.

Lolly had another explanation.

“You did it deliberately. You deliberately didn’t replace the toilet roll so that I would be stuck on the toilet without any toilet paper.”

I remember being completely bewildered. I hadn’t.

“You’re such a horrible, cruel person.”

The difficulty with being a child is that when an adult tells you what you intended, they have a certain advantage.

They are the adult.

Perhaps this is why I am still careful about taking the last one.

The last biscuit. The last chocolate. The last piece of something on a plate.

I hadn’t thought about it particularly until the banana.

By then I was fifty-eight.

Lolly has dementia now.

This complicates things because dementia comes with explanations.

She doesn’t remember.

She didn’t mean it.

She gets confused.

And all of these things are true.

My father explains things.

“No, no, Lolly.”

He explains who people are and why they are there. He explains that this is their house. He explains that he is William. He explains that the bananas were bought for me.

There is a great deal of explaining.

But there are moments when something Lolly says doesn’t feel confused at all.

It feels extraordinarily familiar.

Later she asked about Claire.

Claire was coming to lunch.

I have known Claire all my life. She belongs to the landscape of my childhood, to people and houses and relationships that existed before I understood what any of them meant.

“What time is Claire coming?”

I told her.

“And when are you leaving?”

She said she needed some special time with Claire. It was important that they had time together, so they could talk.

I understood.

“I’ll go before Claire comes. Don’t worry. I know you don’t want me here.”

My father intervened.

“No, no. That’s not what she meant.”

Again, perhaps it wasn’t.

But the feeling was familiar. There had always been people with whom Lolly needed time that did not include me. Over the years the people changed, and so did my place among them.

This is the problem.

When somebody has dementia you become very careful about what things mean.

But I had been careful about what Lolly meant long before she had dementia.

When I was a child, Lolly sometimes wanted me to be her child.

I didn’t understand what that meant either.

She once told me that she and William were going to adopt me.

I went home and informed my mother.

“Mum, I’m just to let you know, William and Lolly are going to adopt me.”

My mother looked at me.

“I’m sorry, but you’re not up for adoption.”

That was the end of that, as far as my mother was concerned.

It wasn’t quite the end of it for me.

Lolly told me things.

Things about my mother. Things about my father. Things about their relationships. Adult things which I listened to because I was a child and therefore didn’t know they were adult things.

Children don’t know where the boundaries are.

That’s one of the reasons adults are supposed to.

I know that now.

I didn’t know it then.

This is what is peculiar about time.

We talk about childhood as though it were somewhere we have been. A country we’ve left. We say when I was a child and put thirty or forty or fifty years between ourselves and the person we were.

Most of the time this works perfectly well.

Then somebody says:

“That’s not very nice of you. What if somebody else had wanted one?”

And there is no fifty years.

There is no distance at all.

There is just the peculiar sensation of being accused of something you didn’t know you had done.

The adult knows that children forget toilet rolls and eat chocolates. She knows that adults shouldn’t make children responsible for adult feelings.

The child knows none of this.

The child only knows that apparently she isn’t a very nice person.

And perhaps the strangest thing is that Lolly can’t remember any of it.

She can’t remember the chocolate. She can’t remember the toilet roll. She can’t remember telling me she was going to adopt me. She can’t remember all the things she told me about my mother.

Sometimes now she can’t remember me at all.

And yet somehow she remembers us.

But I remember.

Standing there with the last banana in my hand, I realised that some part of me had been remembering for fifty years.