‘Do you mean a carer?’ I say, my chest tightening. ‘You mentioned yesterday that I might need a carer to help me around the house. Is that why they’re here?’

‘Why don’t we go and see what they have to say,’ says Claire gently. ‘And then we can take it from there.’

I nod my head and let her guide me along the corridor. There are children’s paintings pinned to the wall, potato prints in bright primary colours, oversized butterflies and fat, smiling caterpillars. As we walk past them my eyes prickle with tears.

Elspeth loved to draw. It was how she made sense of the world. If she’d had a new experience or been somewhere unfamiliar she would run upstairs to her desk when she got home and draw it in precise detail. She could sit there for hours, lost in the new worlds she had just experienced – a train journey, a seaside holiday, moving to a different classroom at the beginning of a new term – and try to situate herself into it. That was the hallmark of Elspeth’s drawings: she always placed herself in the middle of them. She was there on that train, on that beach, in that classroom, so therefore those experiences became real to her. Those new things were not scary any more and she felt safe.

And then my thoughts turn to the riverbank. Why the hell couldn’t I have kept her safe that day? I was her mother, that was my job. And I failed. I failed.

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