My right hand hurts like hell,” Josephine told me as she settled into the chair, supinating her palm. She showed me with the finger of the other hand where and how the pain radiated: around the wrist and into the first few fingers. “I have to shake the pain off my hand sometimes, mainly at night,” she demonstrated, replicating the gesture of air drying a wet hand. “It’s a combination of burning and tingling, numbness and heaviness,” she tried to explain, wincing. She was a company secretary in her 60s, and wore a dress whose scarlet hue reflected as a rose tint in her glasses. Her 97-year-old mother sat next to her, upright and vigilant to every word of the discussion. “I can’t do any work around the house and Mummy needs to chip in; it’s just the two of us.”

Mummy piped in, “That’s what keeps me young and fit.” The only time she has been to a hospital is to accompany people younger than her, she joked, poking her daughter with her walking stick. “What’s your secret to a long life?” I asked. She strained her neck to hear me. “Getting a little deaf,” she apologised. I wondered if that was her answer or she wanted me to repeat the question, but she followed it up with, “People talk nonsense, so the less you hear, the longer you’ll live!” Mummy shed a few pearls of wisdom.