Recently I read some of the last journal entries by the great Australian writer Antigone Kefala, who died, aged 91, late last year.

She was, by all accounts, a wonderful person, full of life and love for life – for people, art, and for the natural world around her. There were glimmers of that joie de vivre in those journals but, more often, an oppressiveness stole through the pages, and a weary circling of the inescapable infirmities, frustrations and indignities of inhabiting a body almost out of time.

Then, under a new date in the calendar: a visit from old friends. The writing, and her spirit, leapt up like a flame. How vital those shared moments seemed.

In the deepest sense, in my credo at least, we are alone in life and death. But I think and hope and have to believe that age need not be so wretched – in fact, it may be the last beautiful aching arch – if one shares those last years in good company.

Belinda Giblin, Melita Jurisic and Toni Scanlan in The Weekend. Photo © Bret Boardman

The Weekend, adapted from Charlotte Wood’s Stella Prize-nominated 2019 novel,...