At the time of Aidan’s death, he’d been hoping to go to university to study Mechanical Engineering. He’d always been such a clever lad, such a hard worker. Neither Lorna nor Roy had ever had anyone in their families go to university, so they’d practically burst with pride when he’d been offered a place by both Leeds and Liverpool to study there. As a child, he’d been fascinated by taking things apart to see how they worked – clocks, dynamo engines, Lorna’s hairdryer once, you name it – and always managed to put them back together again, still working. (Well, pretty much. The hairdryer had developed an alarming singeing sort of smell, but Lorna wasn’t one to dampen a boy’s ambition.)

Six weeks after his death, two envelopes had come through the door for him, and it had been such a bittersweet experience, opening the first one to see that he’d done so well in his A-levels: two Bs in Maths and Chemistry and an A in Physics. She’d opened the second envelope to see that it was a letter from Leeds, his first choice, congratulating him on earning a place on the degree course, with a list of accommodation options. Seeing that parallel future for him on typed pieces of paper had been like a punch in the stomach. This is what you could have won.

But instead he was gone, nothing more than their memories and a headstone in the local cemetery: Aidan Brearley, Rest in Peace.

One of the worst episodes in the whole nightmare – and there were plenty to choose from – had been the day Roy had to ring up the university and tell them, his voice catching on the words, that there had been a change of plan and that Aidan Brearley wouldn’t be attending after all. No, he wasn’t deferring a year, he would never actually be making the trip up the M1 to sit in their lecture halls and laboratories, because he’d driven his car off the road and was dead.

Roy had sobbed for a full forty minutes after that phone call, God love him. They both had. It seemed so final, that door closing in Leeds, a name crossed off the list; Aidan’s place on the course filled by some other student who’d never know the circumstances of their belated acceptance. At the time, Lorna had been unable to imagine any kind of future without her son, when each day brought such emptiness, and yet somehow twenty years had passed. Today was the anniversary of his death all over again, and they had a full fifteen hours of it to get through yet, before the calendar slipped on to another day, another morning. Lorna wondered if she’d survive that long.