“Oh. That explains why I couldn’t find them up here.” Clare looked at the mess she’d created in her search. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she should think about having a clear out. Next to her hand was a box of baby clothes, neatly folded. Why did she feel the need to keep everything? “I didn’t know you had photos. Why do you have them?”

“Because I didn’t want them vanishing in this space of yours. Photos are to be looked at and enjoyed, cried over and laughed over. They’re not supposed to add weight to someone’s ceiling. You boxed up all the photos ready to go into the loft, so I decided to take them with me when I moved.”

Clare sat down in the dust and stared at her mother. “Which photos?”

“Most of them are of our family, and your dad of course, but there are lots of you and Becca, too, over the years.”

“You’ve been looking at photos of Dad all alone and you didn’t tell me? Mum!”

“What? Life goes on, dear. We all have to find our own way. One of my ways is to look at the photos. It reminds me of all the good times we had. So many good times, probably more than I deserved. The photos help me.”

“I can’t bear to think of you looking at photos and feeling sad.”

“Who said anything about feeling sad? Occasionally, maybe, but far more often I find myself laughing. When I see photos of your dad wearing his slippers in the garden for example, the silly man. Did you know he called them his ‘outdoor slippers’? Ridiculous, but endearing, too. And there’s a wonderful one of him sailing. His hair is all over the place and his nose is scarlet because you know how forgetful he was about sunscreen. I’ve put that one in a frame. He would have been furious that I chose that one to be on display. We probably would have argued, but I would have won. It’s the one I like.”

“Where is it? I haven’t seen it.” Clare racked her brains, picturing her mother’s living room.

“It’s next to my bed. His lovely sunburned face is the last thing I look at every night before I go to sleep and the first thing I see in the mornings, just as I did when he was alive.”

“Oh, Mum.”