Anna looked up startled, suddenly ashamed. Roland’s reserve and gentlemanly tact had kept her from appreciating how deeply he felt about her mother’s death.

‘I’m really sorry, Roland. You’ll miss Mummy a lot, won’t you?’

He paused, not meeting her eyes, a jar of Nescafé poised in one hand. ‘I don’t think I can quite imagine how much yet.’

Anna wanted to go to him, give him a hug, but she held back, wondering whether she wouldn’t just be piling her own emotions on him. And there was an odd feeling now, the two of them alone without Kate who had always been there.

‘You were such a good friend to her – to us both.’

Roland gave her a watery smile, determinedly cheerful. He handed her a mug patterned with ears of wheat. Biscuit packet in his other hand, he said, ‘Come on, let’s go out. Much too good a day to be in.’

There was a covered verandah at the back of the house, where they sat on old canvas chairs, looking out over the vivid summer green of the lawn. Roland was cultivating a vine up the two supports of the verandah, its tendrils just beginning to reach across the wooden slatted roof. It was very peaceful, quiet enough to hear birds, insects even. Anna thought of the little yard at the back of the house in Coventry with its dusty slabs and tubs of bolting geraniums.

Roland sat back with a wistful sigh. ‘Biscuit? Go on. Look as if you need it.’

Anna smiled, taking one. Roland always made the smallest things seem a treat, should have had a host of grandchildren to spoil. She could tell he was waiting for her to speak, clearing his throat now and then as if to do so himself but unable.

‘It’s so lovely just to sit still,’ Anna said. ‘I feel as if there are whole aspects of life I’ve forgotten – as if I’ve been underwater for a long time.’

‘That’s what Kate said. Work, work, work all these years. She said when she retired she was going to make time to stand and stare.’

Anna chuckled. ‘That’s not how it sounded to me. She was so full of plans and projects.’

‘Ah well – I expect she didn’t want you to worry or think she was going to vegetate.’

‘It never occurred to me she would.’ Always some campaign with Kate, even in Anna’s earliest memories. Getting people to see that the National Health Service was for them. ‘All these women, so prolapsed that their insides were sleeping beside them on the bed. “Go and get yourself fixed up,” I’d tell them. That’s what it’s for.’ And sex education: working in schools, determined there should be openness, trying to combat the ignorance of young women. Recalling Kate’s energetic, no-nonsense style, how much she loved people, Anna felt tears rise in her eyes.

‘Roland,’ she began. ‘There were a lot of things Mummy didn’t talk to me about, weren’t there?’