‘She wanted us to see her real self,’ said Milly. ‘To see her at her worst and still love her. She knows she’s not going to save the world by fucking someone.’

I imagined Peggy rolling her eyes in weariness at Milly’s continued swearing. ‘She’d never have actually done it,’ Peggy said. ‘Those recruiters were fools to believe she would.’

The scent of honeysuckle was choking me, mixed with the nearby roses I had been trying not to stab myself with. Somehow, though, a thorn caught my finger and my eyes welled up as I sucked away the blood and hoped that Peggy was right.

Now
A Discovery

Five and a half years later

Bath, Tuesday, 25 December 2018

I know the day is going to be bad as soon as I see the kingfisher. He is so perfect, captured beneath the surface of the ice. He stops me in my run as if I have slammed into an invisible wall. Just like him.

I peer over the railings of the small bridge at the frozen water below, for a closer look. He must have been fishing, when the water thickened and trapped him. The vivid blue of his tale, and the dots on the top of his head, are clear beneath the thin layer above him. He is beautifully preserved in his ice cube. There is no sign he fought it, with those wings cupping his body so peacefully, his beak closed and pointed straight ahead.

I cannot bear to look any more, and if I don’t get going I will be late for my visit to my grandmother at the nursing home. So I tear my eyes away and resume my run, trying to tell myself it isn’t a bad omen, but knowing deep down that it must be.

My grandmother has refused to get out of bed today, so Katarina takes me upstairs to her room. The door is open a crack, but not wide enough for me to see in. The sharp scent of lemon disinfectant makes the inside of my nose prickle.

‘Who’s that!’ my grandmother says.

I push the door wide open. ‘It’s me, Grandma.’

‘Who are you? I don’t know you.’ My grandmother rattles the safety rails of her bed like an angry child. ‘You’re not Princess Anne.’

‘No. Sorry. It’s just me. Just Holly.’ It isn’t possible for my grandmother to call me anything else. I moved her from the nursing home in St Ives to this one in Bath twenty months ago, and I told Katarina and the others who look after her here that Holly has always been my grandmother’s nickname for me, but that my actual name is Helen.

‘Go away. Go get Princess Anne.’