I thought my mum looked anxious then. ‘Don’t worry, Mum. I think he’s only joking.’

Although the windows were all open, there was a peculiar calmness here; an enforced silence. An enervated hush. The perfectly shorn lawn was green like the glassy emeralds in my mother’s engagement ring. A few croquet hoops were placed at strange angles, but no one played. A bee hummed across the quiet, and, unnerved by his lone noise, hummed off again.

‘My Maggie.’

Why didn’t she tell me she was saying goodbye? Sometimes still I wake in the middle of the night and I want to scream at her. If only I’d known.

I could have stopped her.

Couldn’t I?

Instead, I watched an old lady sitting in a stripy deckchair on the lawn. She seemed quite normal; a grandmotherly type, though not like Gar. But gradually I saw that she muttered to herself, constantly adjusting her straw hat like it hurt her.

‘Tell me something, Maggie.’ There was desperation in my mother’s tone; it made me feel panicked.

‘What?’

‘Just something. Anything you like.’

My mind darted around like a minnow looking for a way between fat tunas. I wanted to land the right thing at my mum’s feet – but I didn’t know what that was.

‘I’ve been doing the cooking. I’m learning shepherd’s pie. Gar helps sometimes, but mainly I do it all now.’ Which wasn’t really true; Gar did nearly everything, though I helped a lot. ‘Mainly I cook for us now. I’m good at scrambled eggs. I’ll cook you some when you come home.’

I didn’t say I’d nearly burnt the house down with my first solo effort. I was just trying to make my mother proud; reassuring her that we were coping without her guiding hand. Only, as I’ve got older, I’m haunted by my own words; fearful she thought I was saying I didn’t need her any more.

Because, actually, I was utterly lost without her, floundering around, frantic that she should come home. I loved my dad but he didn’t dance around the kitchen with me to silly pop, or play Chopsticks on the piano, or teach me duets; he couldn’t plait my hair just right, or cure my tummy-aches with magic hands.

I needed my mother desperately; I just didn’t know how to say it.

‘I’m so glad you love to cook, my Mag. Just like me.’

One tear crept down my mother’s freckled face – and even that tear was dull. My smile froze. Right then, I didn’t want to be like her. Her tears embarrassed me; I was thirteen and bewildered. And God, that haunts me too.

My dad arrived then with a floral tea-tray that looked faintly ridiculous in his large bony hands. ‘And how are my two favourite girls in all the world?’