He didn’t manage to reply, but his lips curved in an approximation of a smile.

The ambulance sped down the slip road. Such a long way still to go. But I of all people knew that hospitals were not only places where you went to be fixed. That even the most skilful doctors couldn’t always keep you alive.

And it all came back to me: Felix in my arms. Not being able to feed him. The weight of the milk in my breasts. And afterwards, having no choice but to pour it away.

Much, much later, Ava and Ellie and I waited together to find out if Mark could be saved.

Back in Kettlebridge, the evening do was going on without us: music and dancing, hubbub, slices of the cake that Toby would have had to cut all by himself. Meanwhile Mark was unconscious on the operating table while surgeons carried out the delicate procedure that would seal off the broken blood vessel in his brain and allow him to recover.

Ava was sitting next to me, still in her wedding dress, flicking listlessly through an old magazine. She had her hair loosely up, with little strands escaping, and a delicate seed-pearl tiara; she’d gone Hollywood glamour for her dress, all swishy silk skirts and close-fitting bodice. Even in that overheated, strip-lighted waiting room, with its atmosphere of anxiety and powerlessness, she was the loveliest bride I’d ever seen.

Not for the first time, I was filled with astonishment that she was actually anything to do with me. She looked as if she might have arrived in the world already adult, without bothering with all the indignities of childhood. But I knew better. I’d taken her round to people’s houses in a carrycot, and given her toys to play with while I set about cutting their hair. When she was a toddler, I’d shared a double bed with her; when she was a little older, I’d made time to read books to her and had been startled by how quickly she’d learned how to read them for herself.

That was Ava all over. She always wanted to be as independent as possible. If there was one thing Sean, as her stand-in father, had taught her, it was that: the importance of not relying on other people. Which made it all the more surprising that she’d found someone she wanted to get married to. Though Toby adored her, and was a choice that made sense.

It had been Ava’s suggestion that Toby should go back to Kettlebridge and call in on the evening do. After all, Mark’s operation would take at least three hours, and there was nothing Toby could do for him by being here.

They’d left Peter, our old neighbour, in charge of things when they departed for the hospital, along with my sister and Brian, the rather good-looking best man. I couldn’t imagine that the atmosphere would have recovered from Paula’s uninvited appearance and its aftermath, but Ava and Toby seemed to want people to enjoy themselves as much as possible under the circumstances. Karen, my old friend who had come down from Manchester, had volunteered to help too, and my sister had, of course, been in her element. Glad to be needed. I had been profoundly grateful to her, not for the first time. She’d been such a rock after Felix died… She’d come straight away to see me, and had ended up staying a week: making phone calls and sending emails, cooking, cleaning, stepping up or fading into the background as needed.