Mum didn’t try to talk to me again and for that I was grateful. She’d spent enough time yesterday trying to justify her actions, and now we had nothing new to say to each other. We walked slowly over to the furthest part of the garden, where the hole had already been dug. A neat mound of soil lay to one side of it. I knew my parents would have hired someone to dig it and, when we were done here, to fill it in again. Luckily that person or persons were nowhere in sight. It was just the three of us, plus Zorro.

And Aiden, of course.

The coffin was plain and simple. I’d insisted on that. It lay to the side of the hole, wrapped in some complicated mechanism. Dad had explained it to me. When I pressed a button, the machine would lift the coffin up and lower it into the ground. Then the straps would disengage, leaving the box down there, with Aiden in it.

We gathered around the open coffin.

Aiden looked very peaceful. His eyes were closed and he had a look of contentment, as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be. From what I could see, his body was unblemished. Mum had told me that when the drones found him – Aiden had been right, it was the way she’d targeted him – they had burrowed into his frame and shut him down from there. He hadn’t felt anything, said Mum. There had been no violence. He wouldn’t have known what was happening until it happened. I was supposed to take comfort from that.

I put my hand out and touched his cheek. I almost expected him to open his eyes and smile, but of course he didn’t.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mum. ‘There was no choice, but I am sorry.’

Dad reached in and rearranged Aiden’s hair. I noticed a few teardrops fall onto Aiden’s arm, staining his sleeve dark. They weren’t mine. I wasn’t able to cry.

‘Do you want to say anything, Ashleigh?’ asked Mum.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There is nothing to say.’

Dad put the lid on the coffin, snapping it shut on its attachments. There was a small perspex window on the lid and I could see Aiden’s face. It was like seeing myself.

I pressed the button. There was a whirring and the box rose maybe half a metre, swung over into the mouth of the hole and then slid down and out of sight. Dad craned over the edge to watch the coffin’s progress. I stayed back.

Zorro whined and rubbed himself against my leg.

I took the flower I’d tucked into my hair and threw it into the space. Then I turned and walked back to the house, into my bedroom and shut the door.