I didn’t believe him at first. I thought it was a joke. Some weird, dark, sick joke. But then his voice broke as he said it again. And as he started to cry – these horrible, heavy, jagged sobs – the truth ripped through me like a blade.

I remember just sitting there, gasping like I was drowning. The shock was so severe – so insanely violent – that it took the wind right out of me.

The only thought in my head was that I would do anything – anything – for this not to be true.

I sat, paralysed, as I listened to Simon explain what had happened. An aneurysm. A weak blood vessel in her brain. No warning, nothing anyone could have done. She’d been on her way back from the shops, and she’d fallen right there in the street. Dead at fifty-eight. Gone forever.

There’s a blank space after that, where my memories should be. The last thing I remember is hearing Daphne’s key in the door, and the scrape of Simon’s chair as he stood up. Crazy how your brain just slams the shutters on things it can’t cope with.

I have a half-formed memory of Daphne standing over me in the bathroom later that evening, when Simon had gone, trying to pull my hands away from my face. And I couldn’t understand why until I looked in the mirror and saw the bloody red tracks my fingernails had been leaving.

But the rest of the night is a blank. Which is strange, because I know I didn’t sleep. The next thing I really remember is the sound of the rain on the window the following morning. By then, the shock and violence had given way to a kind of numb, broken emptiness, and I lay on the sofa, feeling like I was underwater, while Daff called the travel agency to tell them I wouldn’t be coming back in.

I went round to Mum’s house a couple of days later. The house I grew up in, the house I’m in right now. I don’t know why. I just had to. Daff didn’t want me to go alone, so I lied – told her I was meeting Simon there.

As soon as I opened the door, I knew it was a mistake. The place smelled of her. How could her smell still be here, when she wasn’t?