I take my phone out of the pocket of my shorts and look at it intently, as if I’ve suddenly felt it vibrate. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, and I leave the jetty and go up the steps past Jenna and Ben. I go to my room, pack my things and make up my bed.

I scribble a thank-you message on the back of one of my postcards, put my stuff in the boot and go back out to find Gigi.

She’s alone, lying on a lounger. She smiles and shades her eyes with her hand to look at me as I invent a fairly plausible story about Lucy phoning me about a visit from the loss adjusters. ‘But it’s been great,’ I add.

I had the idea of sloping off surreptitiously, but Gigi gets up and announces to everyone that I’m leaving, and they commiserate that I’ve been called away at such short notice.

They all come out with me, all bar David, which is both a disappointment and a relief, and they each find a farewell stone to stand on in the gravel border. The children, too, stand on the rocks in the gravel in the garden among the wild grasses and ferns. Before jumping back onto hers, Gigi runs over and gives me a hug through the car window, and they keep waving as I drive away.

KIM

Time’s a great healer. Both Mercia and Betty have told me that, and to begin with I was eager to believe it. And over these many days I’ve held onto that thought and waited patiently for my pain to scab over, but it’s not happening. It’s not happening yet. It’s the opposite. As the days stretch on, I miss Enid more, and the hole in my life that started off small just gets bigger and bigger.

I’ve always loved Enid; she was my wife. But I liked her, too. If she were here, she’d have something sensible to say to me and then I’d know how to cope. That was one of her strengths, I could rely on her to do things right. She’d never, for instance, have told me that time’s a great healer, I’m certain of that.

I feel abandoned.

Enid didn’t choose to go, I know that. She hung on longer than anyone has a right to who hasn’t drunk or eaten in five days, and she did it for me – she stayed with me as long as she wilfully could.

And then she left, torn from me, that’s how it felt; she gasped with the speed of it.

And now I’m lonely. Loneliness isn’t something that fills you up. It empties you.