‘Have to catch the van, Ma,’ Rabbit said, and Molly felt her soul shatter. This is it. Her eyes filled, nose blocked, ears buzzed, throat burned. ‘Safe trip, Rabbit,’ she said. One moment later, her child’s grip loosened and she was gone. Molly sat in silence; she didn’t cry out or scream or even whisper to her family to wake up. She didn’t press the buzzer to alert the nurses or move to the hallway to tell the first passer-by. Instead she sat perfectly still. Outside on the windowsill a bird twittered. Inside and just underneath that window, the heater hummed. A spider tootled across the window before jumping onto the wall. Molly sat up straight, her head and spine perfectly aligned, caressing her daughter’s head. At the tender age of forty, Rabbit Hayes was dead. Molly’s youngest and bravest child was dead. Her legs didn’t move, not even a muscle. She returned to holding Rabbit’s hand, waiting for it to cool and stiffen. The clock on the wall read 5.23 a.m. when Rabbit spoke of getting into the van. She repeated 5.23 over and over in her head. It was important to remember the time of death and the date. The twenty-eighth of April 2014. Oh, and the weather. She knew the weather would be important to Rabbit. It was warm and bright but the sun was accompanied by an almost imperceptible, hazy rain.

Davey was the first to wake. He sensed immediately that Rabbit was gone. He sat up slowly and stared at his rigid mother.

‘Ma,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Ma, look at me, Ma.’

But Molly was somewhere else. He nudged Grace, who woke with a start. ‘I’m up, just sort the lunches,’ she half shouted before absent-mindedly rubbing dribble from her chin and blinking to calibrate her blurred vision. Then it dawned on her, shit, I’m not home. This is no ordinary day. Rabbit’s corpse came into sharp focus. Oh no.

‘She’s gone,’ Davey said, and Grace was on her feet and immediately crying.