ALL WEEK SARAH’S FRIENDS, HER COLLEAGUES, HER EX-PUPILS, all those who knew and loved her, are encouraged to come to the house and write their messages on scraps of cloth. Lissa and Laurie make coffee and tea, they give out glasses of wine and of water, put chips and toast and soup on the table, and listen.

She imagines this is what it must feel like after the birth of a child: this liminal space where time behaves differently, is slowed and held.

There are middle-aged men whom Sarah taught as teenagers, who tell of her classes, of her importance in their lives. Younger women with their children in tow, who stare at the house—at the books and the paintings in it—and nod, as though it is exactly what they had expected, or hoped. Sarah’s dealer comes, bearing a spectacular bouquet, leaving a trail of expensive scents in his wake.

Johnny brings his oldest daughter, a tall girl of seven, with straight brown hair that hangs past her shoulders. “This is Iris,” says Johnny. Iris is dressed in high-tops and a hoodie. She stands hand-in-hand with her dad. “We’re going for ice cream,” says Iris. “Do you want to come?”

“Sure,” says Lissa.

They walk the streets and the streets feel strange—it is the first time she has really been out in days. “Is your mum dead?” asks Iris.

“Yes,” says Lissa, “she is.”

Johnny reaches out and puts his arm around Lissa, and she lets him, and his daughter watches them and she does not seem to mind.

She sleeps in her mother’s bed—the bed she died in—and it is not eerie, but comforting. Her mother had the death she wanted, she thinks. She understands now what a gift that was. How many people can say the same?

THE MORNING OF the funeral Lissa puts on a yellow sundress. It is October, but unseasonably warm. Johnny and Laurie arrive to help—they wind the fresh flowers through the weave of the wicker basket.

Don’t call it a coffin, darling. It’s a basket, that’s what I want, a basket filled with flowers.

The basket is indeed filled with flowers, dried ones and fresh ones, and posies of herbs and the ribbons of cloth covered with messages to send Sarah on her way. As she and Laurie and Johnny lift Sarah into the back of her old van, which still smells of turpentine and canvas and coffee, the ribbons lift and flutter in the breeze.

Sarah joked that she wanted to be buried under the pear tree in the garden, but they take her to Islington and St. Pancras Crematorium instead.

It is actually in Finchley, Sarah had said with mild disappointment, when she looked at the map.