The Actor’s Dad, the Dog, and Me.

The actor calls me from Texas to ask if I’ll visit his dad, Eric, in his retirement home. He’s in Texas starring in a film while I’m in London failing at being a writer, sleeping with the dog, and draft-proofing the windows.

“I’ll have to take the dog,” I say petulantly. “In a pet Uber.” I add this as if it’s the final straw. I hate driving on motorways. I sweat and sometimes cry. Other people push through their fears but I can’t. Not today. I feel resentful. I feel like a horrible person.

The actor would visit my mother if I asked him. The thing is he’s away alot so I don’t ask. I call my mother multiple times a day and see her several times a week. I’m worried she’s going to die. She’s actually obsessed with assisted dying. I tell her she can campaign all she wants but she’s not getting it. Not from me. Talking to my mum isn’t a chore. She loves to talk and I love her stories. I’ve been her audience since I was small, and I’m good at it. But sometimes it’s exhausting.

Last week she added another photo of the actor to her family collage. “I’ve been thinking about all the men in my life,” she tells me. “They’ve all abandoned me apart from your husband.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to this. It struck me that the actor and his dad believe in family. It’s in their bones. My family? We were never quite so sure.

“52, Danny La Rue!” I slide the plastic window over number 52, resisting a fist pump. Eric and I are playing bingo surrounded by women with neat blow-dries and red lipstick who keep stealing glances at him. He’s 93, clean-shaven, well dressed and still has a twinkle in his eye. His girlfriend, who doesn’t live in the retirement home, is a glamorous 80-year-old. Women love him.

Eric scowls at his bingo card even though I can see he’s doing well. He’d been adamant about not playing, but here we are, sitting at the back of the room at his insistence, separate from the main group. A small round woman who’d swept us in here sits beside us, giving Eric the side-eye.

“17, Dancing Queen!”

“How old is your dog?” she asks, reaching down to pat Missy.

“Thirteen, but her mum lived to twenty, so she could have years yet.”

“Bingo!” someone shouts.

“Let’s go,” Eric growls. We stand to leave.

“Don’t you want a present?” the caller asks plaintively, hoping it might make us stay. Eric looks mortified.

“I think we’re fine” I say, pushing Eric out the door.

Earlier, when I’d first arrived, we’d walked through the garden. Someone had left raspberries and runner beans from their allotment in a bowl on a bench. We ate them as we wandered, stopping at the sweet peas. Eric’s phone rang, his friend Sydney calling, as he does every day. They talked briefly.

“How’s Sydney getting on?” I asked after he hung up.

“I don’t know.”

“What did he call about?”

“I haven’t spoken to him.”

Eric’s short-term memory is shot. Only the now exists.

I think Eric was a good father. Not perfect, but of all the 1970s dads I know, he took care of his kids. He grew up in poverty with a compulsive gambler for a father. Like my dad, he left school at fourteen to become an apprentice. By his early twenties, he was supporting three siblings and his mother. He took the job of provider seriously, gave all four sons university educations, and when he retired, gave them all his money, keeping just enough to live on. His sons take care of him well now. He’s rarely alone, though I think he’s sometimes lonely.

After we escape Bingo we go to Stanmore for lunch. I realise they won’t let us into Barracuda, Eric’s favorite restaurant, not with the dog. I spot a Costa Coffee.

“We’ll have to go here. I’m sorry.”

“Good,” Eric says cheerfully, which surprises me since he likes smart restaurants. Unlike the actor, who insists on taking his dad to kebab shops. They’ve run out of cheese toasties in Costa. I buy him ham and cheese. Eric pretends to like it. I buy him a cream cake to make up for it. We sit in companionable silence until three elderly women take the table next to us. They look at Eric, then the dog.

“What kind is that?”

“Basset hound shih tzu mix.”

“I don’t usually like bassets, but yours is cute. Which one was the dad?” She winks.

“The shih tzu.”

We laugh. Eric looks into his coffee. He seems uncomfortable being a babe magnet.

Back at the care home, we run into the head of events, a lovely woman with lush dark hair piled in a bun.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“Daughter-in-law.”

“Which son?”

“Jason.”

“Ah, the Jason.” She looks meaningfully at Eric. “Are you coming to my special dinner?”

“Only if there’s dancing,” Eric twinkles. On our way back to his apartment, he tells me she’s a very good dancer.

We say goodbye and I go upstairs to call yet another pet Uber, the bingo has been replacedby a young woman singing ABBA. Everyone is dancing. I rush back down to Eric.

“There’s dancing upstairs!”

“I’m not coming.”

Defeated, I go back alone and watch. The women with their red lipstick and smart handbags are still dancing. There’s a group of serious looking men meeting in a side room. I wish I could get Eric up here. The truth is, I’d been shrinking myself all week. Disappointing news, thin-skinned pride. Maybe I needed Eric now more than he needed me.

My dad used to say getting old wasn’t for sissies. He kept tottering to his gay bar every night until he couldn’t. My mother holds her banners outside Tesco, tells her stories. Her and I hang on to each other. Eric walks the gardens, dresses sharp, flirts with the events coordinator. The women here dance while they can.

On the way home, dog at my feet, I realise I feel better. Lighter somehow. There was something about the bingo, the dancing, the red lipstick. Something so determined and kind. I wonder: now eighty is the new sixty do we still know how to be old? The tech bros want to us live forever because they can’t bear the thought of letting go. But today was different. Life staying irrepressible right up until the last moment. Not denying the end, just refusing to be diminished by it. The beauty is in the showing up while you can, knowing it won’t last. Maybe that’s what makes the dancing precious - not that it goes on forever, but that it happens at all.