At least lunch went well, better than the first time I met Daisy, when Jenny invited her and Paula to the house and Daisy insisted, in that blunt way of hers, that I couldn’t be her father because she didn’t have one. We have agreed to describe me as an old friend of her mother’s, and that seems to make sense to her, for now. Just now, in the pub, she sat quite happily with us all through the main course – she had a ham sandwich, and left the salad – and then Paula took her out into the pub garden, which she seemed to like.

I sense that it’s a relief for Daisy to be outside, away from the slightly strained conversation about Ava and Toby’s honeymoon and Toby’s new restaurant job and the pace of my recovery and what Ellie is planning to do next. Fair enough: it’s a relief to me, too. We have at least that much in common.

Am I learning to love her? Am I capable of it? Is it possible to love someone you have wronged so badly, and carry so much guilt about? It is hard for me to be comfortable with her. If I have learned anything, it is that comfort is not something I have a right to expect.

But I try to bear in mind something Jenny has said to me, once or twice: Don’t worry, just do the right thing now.

Who knows how long I have left? Now may be all I have. I am doing my best to live up to it.

It has been remarkable to see how efficiently and completely Jenny has taken up the reins of the household. To think that I imagined, all those years ago, that I was saving her from a life of poverty and struggle, her and Ava, the child I’d once cast aside without knowing, without even hearing Jenny out: the child who had become the biggest prize I could think of.

It was vanity, really. I could only see my children as reflections on me, to be held close or rejected depending on whether I thought they showed me in a good light or a bad one. Looking at them now, I am struck all over again by what a fool I was. And yet each one of them still reminds me a little bit of me… even though they are so very different, both from me and from each other.

There they are, together for now, though soon enough there will be goodbyes all round and they’ll go their separate ways. Even this little mission, this walk to the grave, brings out the individual in each of them. Ava is leading the way, brisk and purposeful in crisp linen; she is walking along with Paula but they aren’t finding a whole lot to say to each other, and Paula is distracted anyway by keeping an eye on Daisy, who seems calm and cooperative but maybe can’t entirely be trusted not to slip away and get lost as a younger child might. Or maybe it’s just that Paula has got in the habit of being vigilant and can’t let it go even now that Daisy is older and less at odds with her surroundings.