Julia Kelly is best known as a novelist, but she has now written a memoir, Matchstick Man, which describes what it's like to have a partner with early-onset Alzheimer's.

Julia's partner, the artist Charlie Whisker, is now in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's and is in a nursing home. She says it has been "a rollercoaster for the last five or six years."

Charlie hasn't painted in a long time. He doesn't read anymore and can no longer follow a TV programme, but Julia says there are still good times.

When they first met, Julia was in her thirties and Charlie was in his fifties. As an aspiring writer, she says she was "very lost at the time" and had got into the Tyrone Guthrie Centre by the skin of her teeth.

"Charlie was a well-established artist. When I first saw him he was nothing like I expected.

"He is still an utter character. He was the most unusual, intriguing person I've ever met and still is."

Seeing the effect of Charlie's illness has been upsetting: "One of the sad ironies of our whole relationship is that he kind of taught me how to write and now he struggles for words."

"It's not just that you're having to care for somebody, you're losing a partner."

Julia lost her mother in the midst of all of this, and she and Charlie also lost a baby at 17 weeks. She thinks that trauma could have been a factor in Charlie developing Alzheimer's so early on.

They have a nine-year-old daughter, and Julia says it's still very difficult for her at times to cope with what's going on: "She holds his hand to help him across the road, she'll help him put his shoes on and she talks in a very calm, adult way with him. She's quite adult in some ways."

The book is an honest account of their story, which Julia says Charlie would understand.

"He more than anyone understands that if you're describing something, you have to do it honestly."

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