For some reason, I don’t feel angry at being back here any more. I don’t need an explanation. I understand.

Trying to keep my voice steady, I open the book and focus on the words in front of me:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,

It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I look up. The sea of faces is now completely blurred by my own tears. But I got through it. I didn’t let her down.

People are clapping now as I walk back to my seat, and Uncle Simon grabs my shoulder as I pass and whispers, ‘Well done.’ And as I reach Daphne, she stands and takes me in her arms, and I just feel so pathetically grateful that I was given this second chance.

When the ceremony is over, my cousins and I carry the coffin outside while Mum’s all-time favourite track, ‘A Song For You’ by Gram Parsons, echoes around the church’s wooden beams.

I look around for the watch-seller, but I can’t see him. The whole congregation gathers as the coffin sinks down into the earth, and I remember what happened at this point last time. I just walked out: told Daphne I needed some time to myself before I joined everyone else at the wake, and spent the next hour wandering the streets alone, fizzing with misery and anger and horror at the idea of living the rest of my life without Mum in it.

This time, though, I take hold of Daff’s hand and ask if she minds if we stay here a little longer, just the two of us. I tell Simon and Harv we’ll be right behind them all, and before long the graveyard is empty, and it’s just me and Daphne, sitting in silence on a bench in front of Mum’s grave.

‘I’m so glad you did that reading,’ Daff says. ‘Your mum would’ve been so proud.’