‘Wake up! Wake up!’ I screamed at my mother in the bed next to mine. ‘Naomi’s baby has vanished!’

I made such a noise that I literally woke my father from the dead. When I noticed his corpse stir at the other side of the room, I begged it to settle again. I had enough on my plate ‘carenting’ my mother and looking after the baby that I had now lost. I refused to add another caring responsibility to this already-heavy burden.

I left the bedroom to hunt for the baby. My greatest fear was that the dog had plucked her from her cot and wolfed her down as a tasty breakfast. It was therefore with great relief that I found the dog in his basket in the kitchen, curled around the infant, with my tall, slim sister S keeping an eye on the pair of them.

Then I noticed the empty syringe on the kitchen table. My heart dropped: S was injecting again. Even worse, I could hear noises coming from the garage where a bunch of S’s tattooed druggie friends were partying (and probably wrecking the place in the process). I couldn’t bear to think of our sister J’s reaction when she heard about this.

By the time that I returned to the bedroom, my mother was up and dressed. She looked very glamorous in a black chiffon dress. I admired its sheer sleeves and tiny red flower decorations. I also noticed that my mother held some car keys in her hand.

Before we could stop her, my mother was at the wheel of the silver Volvo that I thought we had sold years ago. Neither I nor TPR could wrench control of the car from her, not even when we told her that she no longer held a driving licence and was uninsured to drive. Eventually – with the promise of an Americano – we persuaded her to stop in a café car park. There we grabbed the car keys from her.

Our next challenge was to work out how to return my mother to the safety of her care home.