My granny

My granny came to live with us when I was born. The two events were unrelated, though. My mum had a call from relatives in Madrid begging her to come and take her away. They couldn't manage any longer.

My granny was lively, intelligent, full of humour. She was also quite mad. Paranoid schizophrenia they called it, although we never mentioned it at home. When you grow up with someone with mental health problems it becomes kind of normal. Other grannies knit and watched telly. Mine took me on adventures, told me stories of her family and sang songs to me. She also hid food, urinated on chairs and threatened my father with a knife on a few occasions.

But those are not the things I remember the most about her. Those things were my parents' drama, not mine. To me she was a constant companion, an accomplice, a friend. It was to her bed I used to go whenever I was too scared to go to sleep.

We used to fight too. Her "madness" stripping her of what would have otherwise been a higher status. We treated each other as equals. But we could not be angry for long. All she needed to do was to laugh to defuse me and I would laugh with her. A sonorous, demented, happy, joyful laugh. The kind that can melt away clouds. And we would be friends again.

She is gone, but I sometimes see her in the mirror when I laugh.