Work had helped her too, though, keeping her busy. She and Roy had bought up the derelict farmhouse and its old barns fifteen years ago, and it had been a labour of love to gradually transform first the house for themselves, and then the barns into holiday cottages. They were a good team, the two of them, both adept at practical tasks and neither of them afraid of getting their hands dirty. She’d planted up a kitchen garden as well as beds full of flowers, and found that being outside as the seasons slowly turned around her was soothing and helped her sleep better.

She was doing pretty well, all in all. Holding strong. There was just today to see through and then she could get back to normal again.

‘Here we are,’ said Roy, parking the car, and Lorna felt her mouth dry up as she realized they’d arrived. It was a warm, muggy sort of day with heavy showers forecast, exactly the sort of weather they’d had twenty years ago. Getting out of the car, her fingers tightened around the cellophane-wrapped flowers she’d brought. Sunflowers, his favourite. They’d planted some together in their old garden one summer when he was a little boy, eight or nine, and he’d loved how they’d grown taller than him by the time it was July. She sniffled, feeling the tears gather in her eyes. They were never far away at the best of times, but when it came to the anniversary, anything would set her off. She was like a leaking tap.

Come on, girl, she said to herself. Chin up.

As usual, they walked arm-in-arm through the creaking cemetery gates. She popped in there most weeks to say hello to Aidan and pass on the news, but Roy tended only to visit on the anniversary these days. He said he preferred to think of his son as a young man, not a headstone. Fair enough. They all had their ways of dealing with bereavement. Hers was to believe that she could still communicate with him; that somewhere, on some spiritual plane or other, her boy was able to hear every single thing she said to him and know how much he meant to her. I will never forget you, she told him now in her head. Never!

The Victorian cemetery was deserted, as it so often was, just the faint rustling of the branches of the gnarled old yew trees as the breeze sighed its condolences. You’d see a dog-walker passing through occasionally, but there were seldom other mourners. ‘You were lucky to get a spot here,’ the funeral director had said at the time. ‘This place is pretty much full up nowadays.’

Lucky, she’d repeated back at him with an angrily raised eyebrow and he’d turned red all the way down to his throat.