'What. Is. This?'

Amelia peered over her glasses.

'Something for your mother.'

She knew that Constance always took special care to get a thoughtful present for her mother's birthday. A search that was getting harder every year. But what could you get for a three hundred year old with dementia?

Amelia tapped the screen.

'This will keep her occupied and activate her memory. She can watch it a thousand times over, talk about it each visit and even if you have to watch it every single time with her, she'll never lose her sense of wonder for it. It'll be nice for her.'

Constance knew that her best friend was right. Nobody knew her so well. She couldn't express how appreciative she was to the consideration that Amelia always gave her. The Cackle and Hardbroom families went way back and Amelia knew her mother well. How she used to be. Who she was now.

'Is there no other way to watch it?'

'Afraid not. You've got to have this technology. She can use it to search all sorts of things.'

Constance turned over the contraption in her hands. She'd known from previous forays into the ordinary world that it was the kind of thing that needed charging with a cable. There were no plug sockets in the castle or in her mother's care home. Amelia had foreseen that problem and had acquired one that needed batteries. Several packs of batteries were in the box.

'She'll love this one.'

Amelia showed her how to tap the screen, search and upload a video. Constance's eyes never left the video, transfixed by the music and the ice skaters. Bolero, from 1984. It was marvellous. The way they skimmed the ice and the air. It was like magic. She replayed it twice. Amelia sat back and waited.

Constance was starting to get an idea of how the tablet worked. Amelia patiently spent the evening with her finding performances that her mother would enjoy, queueing them up in an automatic playlist.

'We'll find a few audiobooks for her to listen to. She won't be able to follow it but it'll be good background noise. Make her feel less lonely.'

She added in several more videos to the list. Ice skating over the years (wonderful), Eurovision performances (what was a Verka Serduchka and why was she wearing tin foil?), music videos (shudder) and some official films of musicals (all of that singing when they could just say what they needed to say) and clips of dogs and cats doing funny things (acceptable). Poetry readings (also acceptable). The playlist scrolled onto the hundreds.

'Now she can watch on a loop.'

Constance looked at her in amazement.

'How did you get to be so proficient?'

'Gabrielle. She's studying all sorts of things in an ordinary university as a mature student.'

'Mature student?'

'They think she's forty.'

They looked at each other and started laughing. It was just what Constance needed. More stories about Amelia's haphazard niece in the ordinary world. The last story involved Gabrielle pranking her fellow students with a rubber chicken and a hunting horn.

Amelia always made her world feel less lonely. For that she was eternally grateful.