Just as I had started to wonder if this would be the year it stayed winter forever, strange white things began to push up from the frozen soil. My snowdrops!

‘But how?’ I asked Nola. ‘They’re such tiny delicate things.’

‘Delicate?’ she asked. ‘Them? They’ve petals like blades. It’s how they shove their way out of the dark into the light. Oh, they might look fragile, but they’re well able to survive.’

I’d frowned. ‘Are you metaphoring me?’

‘So what if I am?’

Not long afterwards, the crocuses appeared, pretty and startlingly vivid, then the daffodils, in their exuberant bursts of yellows. Everywhere were fresh shoots of green, shocking against the January pallor—and I was ‘in’. A gardener. On-board for wherever it took me.

My hands in the soil, helping living things to grow from almost nothing, did something good for me. Working in silence and solitude, caught up in concentration and care, was the closest thing to meditation I’d found. I could lose hours to it.

When, inevitably, flowers died off, I felt it deeply, but after the first couple of years, acceptance crept in. Everything had its moment, its time to be alive, and then it stepped aside to make room for fresh life.

‘Hey!’ Claire, followed by Kate, had come into the garden. ‘Rachel. C’mon!’

‘C’mon, what?’

‘Dresses,’ Kate said. ‘For Granny’s party. Mum’s ordered lots for me to try on.’

Immediately I abandoned my tools. Following the pair of them up the stairs to Kate’s bedroom, I said, ‘I can’t hang around too long, I’m going to a meeting.’

‘Good woman…’ Claire was never interested in that part of my life.

I stopped dead at the sight of several cardboard boxes on Kate’s floor. ‘Claire…Did you order all of Net-a-Porter?’

‘Nearly. Okay, let’s go!’ Gleefully, Claire produced a high-necked, sequined mini-dress and swung it at Kate. ‘Try that. With these…’ She rummaged through one of the bigger parcels, emerging with a shoebox. ‘…flatforms!’

Kate complied, then stood before the mirror. I was biased and I knew it but with her long legs, shiny hair and clear, fresh skin, she was gorgeous.

‘I don’t think so,’ she decided.

‘You’re wrong!’ I exclaimed.

‘It’s too…’ She shrugged. ‘Shiny? I’m not a sequins person.’

‘Try it with these sneakers.’ Claire produced another shoebox.

‘Better,’ Kate concluded, once she’d put them on. ‘But still not me.’

‘No worries.’ Claire was undaunted. ‘Try this.’

‘This’ was a corset dress in pale pink. ‘Burberry,’ Claire said.

But once she was zipped into it, Kate shook her head, ‘It looks…medicinal.’

‘Then take it off.’

I had to hand it to Claire. There were no attempts to persuade Kate to change her mind. She just moved on to the next option—which was a black organza cape dress.

‘God almighty,’ I gasped. ‘That’s so beautiful.’