“One time Uncle Shay brought them all to the bike shop and let them try the bikes. And sometimes Uncle Kevin brings over his Wii and he has spare controllers, and Nana gives out because they jump around too much and she says they’ll have the house down.”

I tilted my head to get a proper look at Holly. She had Clara hugged a little too tight, but her face didn’t tell me anything. “Sweetheart,” I said. “You know Uncle Kevin won’t be there this Sunday, right?”

Holly’s head went down over Clara. “Yeah. Because he died.”

“That’s right, love.”

A quick glance at me. “Sometimes I forget. Like Sarah told me a joke today and I was going to tell him, only then after a while I remembered.”

“I know. That happens to me, too. It’s just your head getting used to things. It’ll stop in a while.”

She nodded, combing Clara’s mane with her fingers. I said, “And you know everyone over at Nana’s is going to be pretty upset this weekend, right? It won’t be fun, like the times Donna’s told you about.”

“I know that. I want to go because I just want to be there.”

“OK, chickadee. We’ll see what we can do.”

Silence. Holly put a plait in Clara’s mane and examined it carefully. Then: “Daddy.”

“Yep.”

“When I think about Uncle Kevin. Sometimes I don’t cry.”

“That’s OK, sweetie. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t either.”

“If I cared about him, amn’t I supposed to cry?”

I said, “I don’t think there are any rules for how you’re supposed to act when someone you care about dies, sweetheart. I think you just have to figure it out as you go along. Sometimes you’ll feel like crying, sometimes you won’t, sometimes you’ll be raging at him for dying on you. You just have to remember that all of those are OK. So is whatever else your head comes up with.”

“On American Idol they always cry when they talk about someone who died.”

“Sure, but you’ve got to take that stuff with a grain of salt, sweetie. It’s telly.”

Holly shook her head hard, hair whipping her cheeks. “Daddy, no, it’s not like films, it’s real people. They tell you all their stories, like say if their granny was lovely and believed in them and then she died, and they always cry. Sometimes Paula cries too.”

“I bet she does. That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to, though. Everyone’s different. And I’ll tell you a secret: a lot of the time those people are putting it on, so they’ll get the votes.”