ALMOST TWENTY YEARS ago, before I left my parents’ house – my home, my country, my continent – to adventure into a new world, I did the maths. If I visited my parents every year for the rest of their lives, I might be able to spend another year with them. Approximately. It depended on many variables: how often I visited, how long I stayed each time, and the big one – how long my parents might live. I had no reason to expect they wouldn’t live for many years yet, but still a stark reality hit me as I tallied up those increments of time. Though my relationship with my parents has always been complex and fraught with trauma, leaving them, and the only home I’d ever known, still summoned a dark grief, sodden with the realisation of a love that would forever be changed by this geographical rend.

I became aware I’d already spent the most time I would ever spend with my parents, and each moment together from then on would be a moment snatched from a dwindling store, until one day we would run out. This was a sombre reckoning, and I tried to push it out of my mind as I prepared for my new life. I was young, my parents too were young, and this eventuality seemed a very long time away.