Mia rooted around in the pocket of her jeans, found a tissue, blew her nose, and shook her head. “Definitely not. It would just annoy her, knowing I’d been moaning to you about it. I just have to get on with it.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment as Mia wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Granny, can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can. Anything.”

“What happened when Grandad died? And why won’t Mum talk about it? I mean, I know she really loved him and I know it must have been horrible for her but . . . I don’t know . . . She seems really angry about it too. I’ve stopped asking her because she never answers me.”

Mia’s questions hummed in Audrey’s head, peeling back the layers of memory until she was back there, running past the police car and into her house to discover the cause of Helen Sheppard’s hysterical phone call.

When the young policeman had told her what had happened, Audrey had thought there must have been some mistake. It could not have been Edward who had done this. Edward was strong and sensible, the one upon whom they all depended to be the voice of reason.

But as the policeman had stated the facts again, slower this time, Audrey had known deep in the pit of her stomach that it was true. She had not needed the policewoman to tell her that he had left no note because she had already known why Edward had chosen to take his own life. She had been the only person who knew, and the knowledge had felt like a shroud of loneliness wrapping itself around her.

She remembered holding on to Jess, remembered how quiet the house had been, how still. How there had been no sound bar a duet of sorrow and heartbreak, and how it had taken a little while for her to realize that one of the voices chanting the lament was her own.

She had stood in the sitting room, police officers bustling around her, and thought about the last time she had seen Edward as she had walked out of their bedroom that morning, him still cocooned under the duvet. She had asked whether he should start getting ready for work, the pretense at normality straining her voice. He had kept his back to her, told her he was taking the day off, his voice the distant monotone that in recent weeks had become his only alternative to rage. That cold, distant behavior was so unlike the man she had married, so unlike the man he had been just three months before. She had promised to keep the girls quiet, told him that a day off would probably do him good, trying to find in her voice something to dissolve the animosity that had wedged itself between them.

Holding on to Jess, not yet able to comprehend that she would never see Edward again, Audrey had wondered why she hadn’t been more vigilant. Why she hadn’t thought it odd that Edward—whose sick days in seventeen years she could count on one hand—should suddenly grant himself a day off. Her cheeks had burned with self-reproach that, after everything they had been through, she had not been more alert to changes in his routine, however slight. As the clock in the hall had chimed, Audrey had known that she was to blame. Edward might have tied the noose around his neck, but she had handed him the rope.