It was his email that intrigued me:

‘You have no clue what really happens when you get old. My wife of 55 years has been taken from me by illness. Maybe one day you could visit her in the nursing home. She is in room 19. Her name is Ada.’

Warm regards, Carl, 87.

The following day, on a whim, I drive out to the aged care home. It’s a secure facility. A cleaner notices me waiting expectantly on the visitor’s side of the door. She punches in the security code, then pads noiselessly away on her soft soles, leaving me to guess which of the deserted corridors to search first. I inhale that haunting scent – the staleness of life at its lowest ebb. It’s the same miasma I recall from the nursing home where my Nan died – the smell of confinement, unease and antiseptic.