Half smiling, Heather sat down on the foldaway chair and sifted through the bits and pieces. It looked like her mother had actually rescued an old abandoned crafting set of Heather’s, one of the expensive packs of multi-coloured clay she had campaigned for one birthday, and with it she’d been making jolly napkin holders festooned with holly and snowmen. Next to the finished pieces was a Post-it note with the address of a nearby old people’s home. Had she intended to give them to the retirement home as part of their Christmas fair? They had gone to it many times when she was a kid, buying cakes and talking to the old dears. Heather picked up one of the napkin rings and slipped it onto her finger. Her mother had done a lot of work on these, had been halfway through making another. What made someone put down their cosy crafting project and think about ending their life instead?

The texture of the smooth clay against her fingers reminded her of the times she had tried to make things herself. The clay was tough to mould straight out of the packet, so you had to warm it up in your hands, but Heather’s small fingers had never been much good at it. Abruptly, she remembered sitting in this very room with her mother, newspapers spread carefully over the carpet, and small plates in front of them both. Her mum had taken each piece of coloured clay and warmed it in her own hands first before passing it over to Heather, so that she could make something out of it …

Heather put the napkin ring back, her hand shaking. Nikki was right, she told herself. I can’t know what Mum was going through. I’m seeing mysteries where there are none.

Even so, as she left the room, turning back to look again at the industrious little table, the sense that something somewhere was deeply wrong wouldn’t quite leave her.

Heather spent the next day moving around the house, making notes and wondering at how much stuff people accumulate around them. At lunchtime she heated up the stew Lillian had left her, eating it from a big bowl in front of the telly. It was tasty and thick, but by the end of it she felt faintly ill, and she wondered if she’d waited too long to heat it up – if some ingredient in it had gone off. She washed up the dish diligently, just in case Lillian called back for it.