And there was the last Mother’s Day card he’d sent her, with ‘Love you, Mum’ written inside; a splodgy painting brought home from his infant class; the school report he’d had aged fifteen, where one of the teachers had written, If Aidan Brearley doesn’t become a very successful engineer or physicist in years to come, I will eat my hat!

It always gave her a lump in her throat, that line. She turned the page quickly.

When Lorna reached the first page with an empty space, she glued in the piece of paper where she’d written down the memory that had occurred to her that morning. Every little detail concerning Aidan that floated into her head, however trivial or inconsequential, she tried to jot down and stick in the book, along with all the other pictures and memorabilia. Just so that she had as much of him as it was possible to have. Just to try and keep him from drifting away from her altogether.

I remembered the party he and his friends had after their GCSEs, at Jason Fisher’s house. How they’d started playing football with a melon in Jason’s garden, and after a few kicks it had ended up splattered all over the roses. Mr and Mrs F were so cross they banned Jason from having friends round – and melons in the house! – for the whole summer.

She smoothed a hand over the newly added paper, as if stroking his beautiful face. She could almost picture the melon as it broke into juicy pieces, outlined against the blue sky. Smell its sweet sticky flesh as it showered everywhere, hear the boys guffawing.

‘Teenagers, eh?’ she murmured to herself with a little smile.

‘Teenagers!’ said Em that night, once she and George were cosily snuggled in bed together. What a day it had been, she thought. One of those when you were glad to see the back of it, frankly.

‘So they got pissed and went on a robbing spree – is that about the size of it?’ George asked, his arm heavy and warm where it was slung across her.

‘No!’ Em spluttered. ‘It wasn’t like that.’ She sighed, nestling a little closer into him. ‘Well, all right, I suppose it was like that, a bit,’ she conceded glumly.