I buy a ticket and take the train. “I am a rock, I am an island,” is singing somewhere at the back of my head. If I’d never loved I never would have cried. Simon & Garfunkel: the inseparable duo who separated, the proof of human division, of communication break down. I am a rock, I convince myself, and a rock feels no pain, so it is better to be a rock, after all. I travel abroad and I am anonymous, independent. I travel abroad and the closest thing to home is the little purple passport in my back pocket.

A few weeks on, the same story: I buy a ticket, take the train – from Cardiff, this time. There are scatterings of Welsh-speaking softness on the platform, people here and there with a lilt of homeland about them. I listen in, briefly, but choose a different carriage to the silver-tongued Celts. I have no need of home, of attachment, of hiraeth, I tell myself. And an island never cries.

I get off the train, haul my blue suitcase over the bridge. The suitcase has a faded brown leather tag on it, with my grandparents’ name and address handwritten on it. Return to sender: the suitcase and I are going home.

Lemon sole, chicken soup, crème catalan. I produce tokens from my rucksack: a yellow eggcup and a flowery china mug for tea. There are really beautiful buckets of roses on the landing.

After the operation she has lost a stone and a half. Her smile and her eyes are the same crinkly marmalade though.

We eat together. They normally divide the labour up, and Emi does the potatoes and the bread and butter. Now though, after the op, Emi has had to take on all the food-furnishing. The family are sending Waitrose food hampers up so that they have plenty of ready meals and fresh fruit and veg, to make mealtimes easier. Of the food hamper items, the lemon sole and crème catalan rule supreme. It's great that she's eating now. Each mouthful disappears like a stealthy cat around a corner, but the mouthfuls are thin as petals and her appetite is wilting. We start the crossword, but she wants to go back to bed. Emi and I chaperone her up the stairs and it is the most important thing I have done all month, all year maybe. We are supposed to stand behind her in case she falls but it is not our bodies which protect her from falling.

I come back down the stairs slowly , trying not to let feelings form like thin skin atop boiled milk. I am not a rock, nor an island. Simon and Garfunkel were wrong, totally wrong. When I get to the bottom of the stairs, thinking about the food hamper, the cards, roses, visits, presents, my grandfather looks up from the crossword. “to support another, six letters. What d’you think that is?”

It’s family, I want to say. It’s love, Emi. It’s you.