I’m a trained phonetician and don’t really work that way. Any more than I’d ask you to sing me a medley of your greatest hits.”

A few weeks before she died — I didn't realize it at the time — she went through the 25 either widowed, divorced or single women amongst our friends, and she basically detonated every single one of them with a little verbal jab. So her voice would drive you nuts, you know? During a matinee interval, the stage manager went around the dressing rooms, asking if anyone knew “the very tanned woman wearing Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, who was fast asleep in a house seat and snoring very loudly.” Around this time, I received a letter from Equity, the actors’ union, and was informed that a retired actor called Richard Grant had complained, after seeing his name outside the Churchill Theatre, requiring me to change mine. Called Equity in a panic and explained that I had no money, and that my name was printed on all my ten-by-eight photos already. This resulted in experiencing ‘literary whiplash’ - pulled around from an emotional chapter to subsequently being regaled with glossy celebrity tales in the next one, and feeling slightly uncomfortable about how they could be within such close proximity of one another. At 11 a.m. lung coordinator Alex calls and asks to speak to Joan. I know instantly from the tone of her voice that the news isn’t good. Too calm. Too conciliatory. Joan is still in bed when I hand her my phone.In the midst of grief—the most isolating state of all—Grant rapidly built community. “I’ve found incredible comfort in these thoughtful videos you share with us; their beautiful honesty, their pain—but always the careful reframing of each piece within the greater mosaic of a life well lived,” one woman commented recently when Grant shared that his mother had died. Taken as a whole, the uploads can be disorienting, which is what makes them so revelatory as a record of life after loss. Grant posts videos from friends’ houses; he promotes his own projects; he re-creates scenes from Withnail to pass the time during 10 days in quarantine. But underlying everything is Joan’s absence—the feeling, as he remarked in one post, while walking on the beach in Australia, of being “like an old turtle without my shell.”

Mother and daughter hug each other and our brave child says, “Let’s have a great Christmas together.” Manage to get through to our local health centre immediately and given an appointment at 5 p.m. for a chest X-ray and blood test at Kingston Hospital.

His decision to form the book’s narrative jointly out of the most enchanting highs (the Oscars, karaoke with Olivia Colman in a house formerly owned by Bette Davis) and the bleakest lows (Joan’s diagnosis, her fury when Grant inadvertently used the word terminal one day to describe her illness) came, he said, out of his desire to accurately capture what most people’s lives are like… [Richard and Joan’s] relationship is the fascinating central pillar of the book.” Thank you Mr. Grant for this gorgeous book, this intimate look into the wonderful life that was your marriage to Joan Washington [and by the end, I was so very sorry that I never had an opportunity to meet such a fantastic person] and the extremely intimate look into her illness and death. Even though I cried serious ugly tears throughout much of this book, I would read it again for the first time in a heartbeat. I would read it again for a second time right now if I was told to. It helped me with my own grief and indeed I think anyone who has dealt with grief in any way imaginable, will get something from this book, even if it is an amazingly cathartic cry. Sorry, should have said, I like to smell everything in sight. Always have done. Ever since I can remember. Can’t understand why everyone doesn’t. You’re a brilliant cook.” GRANT: When those people cross over from being people that you know as marquee names, as you put it, to being your personal friends, then they just happen to be the people that are turning up. And in the final count, when it comes down to it, you find out who of those marquee name friends are your real friends or not. And 99% of people came through beyond all measure with their compassion and kindness. And it really helped us, my daughter and I, and certainly Joan enormously. And she was - she felt so revived by that. And I'm indebted to those people for their generosity and kindness because they all had to travel a distance to get to where we were living, that cottage in the countryside.

The “kids” go downstairs to make breakfast. Joan takes my hands, and asks: “You will stay with me through all of this, won’t you?”

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A diary makes something that seems unreal feel real. If I write it all down, then it actually happened.’ Photograph: Sophia Spring/The Guardian I ask if his friends have started trying to fix him up with eligible women. “Some have, yes. And I find that absolutely bizarre. It’s not something I could even conceive of at this point. It’s still too raw and present, and I am still having an ongoing conversation with my wife in my head,” he says. But it’s not, of course, the same as the real thing. Newly arrived in London, I was waitering at Tuttons brasserie in Covent Garden, and had just secured an acting agent, who suggested getting accent coaching to help me play Northern Irish, as there were so many dramas being made about the Troubles and “you’re dark-haired and blue-eyed, so you could go up for Irish roles.” I entered into this book under the notion it would be solely focussed on Grant’s experience of losing his wife. Understandably so, given the memoir’s title is the parting advice upon her death, in addition to Grant’s press tours where he continually touted this as a memoir on Joan’s terminal cancer. She takes a deep breath and declares, “Promise me that you won’t share any of this with Oilly, until we’ve had confirmation from the medics. Do you promise me?”