They slump in chairs and on sofas, or lie on the carpet and we have to step over them. Their dishes and cutlery pile by the kitchen sink, we spend a good part of each day washing up. Trying to find love for them in our hearts, or any non-negative emotion, we greet them with cheerful politeness. In response we get silence, the occasional grunt.

Their rooms are a mess. We don’t tidy up for fear of offending them, but every now and then we collect their dirty clothes to put in the washing machine and hang on the line. We steel ourselves to clean their toilet, using powerful chemicals. In the shower we find a strange orange mould, never previously encountered.

Coming downstairs again, we groan and hold our hands to our backs. We have arthritis, fibromyalgia. They don’t sympathise, never ask us how we are.

They seem to have no serious thought of leaving. We’ve shown them estate agent details, places for rent, but they’re not interested. Girlfriends come and go, young women with lives of their own, jobs, flats. At first they seem happy, then puzzled and finally annoyed. Voices are raised, our front door is slammed, cars drive away.

We suspect they’re waiting us out -- hoping eventually to inherit the house, plus our savings accounts, so they’ll never have to go anywhere, do anything, take any sort of initiative. But we don’t resent this, it’s natural. We worry about how they’ll cope, after we’re gone.

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