Was there anything worse than losing a child? Could any pain be more sharply felt? The suddenness of his death had felt like an act of violence in itself. Aidan and his girlfriend had been out for the evening together, seeing some band or other in Truro, and he’d been driving them home. It was dark, and the road was wet following an earlier cloudburst and his tyre treads had been on the elderly side, according to the police report, so when he took a bend too fast, the car had left the road, tumbling down the steep embankment until it came up hard against a sturdy oak tree. Aidan had died on impact, a stunned look on his face, as if he’d seen death coming for him and couldn’t believe his bad luck. The girlfriend, meanwhile, had been trapped in the car with his body until the paramedics got her out, and suffered whiplash and concussion, but at least she had survived.

Oh, Lorna had raged and raged at the injustice of Aidan’s loss, at the cruelty of the world. She had screamed and wept into her sofa cushions like a madwoman, she had smashed things against the kitchen wall, she had dropped to her knees and sobbed in his bedroom, before collapsing to the floor and lying there on the carpet that still smelled faintly of him, for what might have been minutes or hours. And then, after all that raging, she had taken to her bed, wrung out, and had stayed there for a whole week.

Depressed, the doctor called her, as if it was possible to sum up the maelstrom of her emotions with one single labelling word. As if anyone else had ever felt so tormented, so robbed of the brightest light in their lives! How could anyone possibly understand how she felt?

Time was a great healer, people kept telling her, and in the twenty years that had passed, admittedly the pain had lessened. She and Roy had clung tightly to one another through the darkest days and nights, seeing the heartbreak out together. They’d had a succession of dogs – Patch and Murphy and Meg – who, to Lorna’s surprise, had helped tremendously in getting her through each day, forcing her back out into the world again, rain or shine, and, most unexpectedly, making her laugh at their daft antics and naughtiness. Not to mention easing a bad day with their innate doggy kindness. How was it that dogs always sensed when you were having a wobble, and knew exactly when to offer a sympathetic nose-push, a head on the knee, a warm bodily lean against the legs in canine solidarity? It didn’t compare to hearing her son’s rich, happy laugh bouncing off the walls, mind. There were some things that even the most loyal of dogs couldn’t make better.