We were playing Cluedo when I first noticed Mum wasn't quite right. It was Christmas and she'd had a Baileys or two but she kept forgetting the murder weapons. Now I know Cluedo isn't the easiest of games to follow but this was bizarre.

I held up the dagger to show her and said, 'That's the dagger.' 

'Yes,' she said.

'Good, it's your turn. What's the murder weapon?'

I nodded towards the dagger.

'Axe,' she said.

And so it went on, toy weapons revealing the real murder going on inside mum's brain.

A few weeks later I came home to find she'd switched off my freezer and boil washed all my woolens. This from a woman who made Kim and Aggie look amateur.

Dad got really worried when they went to a party in the village, to a house she'd been to many times before, and had a bad fall. 

'She completely missed the steps,' he whispered in the kitchen. 'It's if she didn't know they were there.'

'She's a bit bashed and bruised but there's no real harm done,' I reassured. All of these events were explicable and yet a feeling in my stomach wouldn't go away.

Dad stroked his wispy hair, a sure sign he was worried.

'It's more than that, Pidge. Your mum's been doing odd things lately. Sometimes she forgets where she is. We were in Sainsbury's the other day and when we came to pay she had no idea what money was. It was as if she'd never seen a pound coin in her life. She just froze at the checkout staring into her purse.'

Mum and dad met when she was sixteen and he was seventeen, at the Palais de Dance in Leicester. War was raging and Dad was soon off to sea, having lied about his age to join the Navy rather than work down the mines as a Bevin Boy. 

He loved to dance and she loved him from that very first night, jiving and jitterbugging into the next 55 years.

They married soon after he got demobbed, Mum in a borrowed wedding dress and dad in his naval uniform. She was 20 and he was just 21. He'd done four years at sea and been to Hiroshima just after they dropped the Atom bomb. 

'I can never give blood because of the radiation,' he said as we sat on the settee watching the wrestling on the tele. 

'Submit' he shouted at Mick Mcmanus. 

'Tag him,' I joined in. I was proud my Dad couldn't give blood. It made him special.

Dad kept pictures of the war in a biscuit tin in the attic, tiny black and white squares taken with his box brownie camera. He called them atrocity photos and after a few beers would get them out like you do a wedding album. I never wanted to look except at the picture of the Japanese girl he called his 'girlfriend.' Mum never seemed to mind which made me think she must have had her fair share of G.I.'s whilst dad was doing his duty.

At the bottom of the box was the recorded message he made in Japan, a blue black wobbly wax disc, made in a booth one drunken night on shore leave in between ships. I'd play it at Christmas when we got the decorations down.

'I miss you darling,' he said. I always laughed at this part, my parents were never openly affectionate and it embarrassed me.

'I've got no friends on board the new ship yet. But if you have no friends, you can't lose any can you?' 

That's when I'd start crying. 

'Put it away Ken, you're upsetting her,' Mum would say. 'She doesn't need to know about war at her age.'

He'd look at me and wink. 'That was a long time ago, Pidge. Come and help me feed the budgies eh?' 

He held my hand and I felt the sorrow in his fingers.

Dad drank too much to forget the war and there were lots of rows as I grew up, loud passionate fights that sprayed the air with resentment. 

'Can't we go abroad, Ken like everyone else?' Mum pleaded as she served up fatty Pork Chops, so it must have been a Wednesday.

'We can't afford it. Pass the salt please.'

'I've been putting a few bob away each week,' she said, a look of pleasure in her eyes.

'I must be giving you too much housekeeping,' dad said.

'I've used my wages. I've been going in a bit earlier and staying a bit later....'

Dad slammed his knife and fork down. 'Very commendable Sheila.'

'Ken, ' she implored, pouring more Bisto on his chops. 'It'd be exciting for the kids.'

'You take the kids Sheila, I've seen quite enough of the world. I'm happy in my own home with the kids and you. What more could a man want? Salt please.'

When things got too much Dad would go and sit on the wall at the end of the street next to Daisy's bungalow. Daisy was the oldest lady on the estate and commanded monarch-like respect. He'd puff on a ten pack of Park Drive and sit quietly until Daisy emerged with a mug of tea laced with brandy.

'Y'all right laddie?' Daisy asked.

'Nothing winning the Pools won't fix,' Dad said.

'You're one of the richest men on this estate laddie, look at your lovely family.'

 'Aye,' he said sipping on Daisy's special brew. He stubbed out his cigarette and stuffed it in his  shirt pocket for later.

'I'd best be off,' he'd say. 

'Don't go to bed on a row, that's a good un,' Daisy said.