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Oliver Keens
Opinion Being an only child felt like a blessing – until I realised it wasn’t
In the days after my dad died, I noticed a woman around my age in my parent’s building on the Isle of Dogs in London (it’s the bit on the map of The Thames that looks like a testicle). She’d be wheeling her frail, elderly father into the lift; I’d be consoling my grief-stricken mother up the stairs. One afternoon, having each attended to the people who, decades before, attended to us, I saw her on the stairwell. “Only child, right?” I said. We sat, talking about the strange new realities of our lives. I definitely wanted to cry. I don’t remember if I actually did. But we hugged, then parted. I never saw her again.