The bell above the door announces her arrival. Alison looks over her shoulder and smiles. A young man is up a ladder, whistling. Maddy heads for a rack of homemade greetings cards, the only thing in the shop that’s new. Her face is burning. She grips the handles of her shopping bag tighter and keeps her head down. There’s a faint musty smell of old clothes, of death. Discarded, unwanted items; a clothes graveyard. People bag them up and bring them here like she did with her mum’s things. Maybe some people don’t wash the clothes first. She could never bring Chloe’s things here. No one is having those. Just the thought of having to let them go, makes her catch her breath. What if she saw another child wearing Chloe’s favourite dress? She should bring Max’s clothes though. There’s no point keeping them. Doesn’t look like he’s coming back. They’d look strange hanging here on the rail or on a dummy. The thought suspends in the air like an invisible thread.

Gravitating towards a rack marked ‘Vintage’, she fingers a blue dress, frayed around the seams as a fashion detail. Someone bold must have loved wearing it once. There are whole racks full of people’s personalities. She flicks through another and finds a shift dress in a thick woven material with mustard-coloured swirls and tiny pockets above the hem. Similar to one she wore as a child. The sound of funfair music starts playing in her head. Margate beach on a warm sunny day, a bucket and spade and a stick of rock. With the father she loved and thought she knew so well. She looks up to see her mother nod at her from an upright mirror.

Maddy glances over at Alison behind the till. Does she know he might be dead?

‘Three fifty, please,’ Alison says to the woman she is serving. She holds up each item of clothing and folds them. ‘Aren’t they lovely?’

‘Having a boy next, so I thought, yeah, why not,’ the customer says, rubbing her bump, ripe as a melon.

‘I’d love a girl,’ sighs Alison. ‘Always wanted one of each.’

Maddy picks up a candle. The wick is scorched, and the centre is a deep scar of melted wax. She stands in the queue behind the woman and her pushchair. Maddy can feel her baby moving. She puts a hand to her bump and imagines the shape of a little fist or heel kicking out.

When the woman leaves, Alison smiles, sly as a cat. As she takes the candle from her, Maddy’s eyes fix on her necklace, a small silver asymmetrical heart. Her hand shoots up to her own neck. It’s exactly the same one as Max bought her for her birthday last year, but she’s not been wearing it lately. Instead her fingers curl around her mum’s garnet pendant.