All this time. All these months that I have spent believing Anna was angry with me when she died, that I had hurt her with those horrible things I said to her when we argued, that the residual upset had contributed to the fact that she wasn’t paying proper attention to the road, or to Suki.

And all along she had found it funny?

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I do both, loudly and hysterically and without a thought for how berserk and deranged I must sound to anyone who might be passing.

How could I have been so stupid? Why did I ever think that Anna was capable of holding a grudge against me, when all logic said she wasn’t?

I know the answer, but it’s an unpleasant one to admit, even to myself. The truth is so clear to me now: I believed it, because it allowed me to make sense of Anna’s death. When I could lay the full blame for the accident at myself, then I became the reason she was gone – me, not some dumb bad luck, or fate, or anything else intangible, but me.

If I was at fault, then I could punish myself; I could stop doing the things I love and shut myself away from the world. I thought it would make the grief easier to bear, but my thinking has been so warped by misery. All I did by clinging on to all the blame was prolong the agony.

And that is what it has felt like: agony.

David returns with a large paper bag stained with burger sauce and a clanking carrier from the liquor store to find me curled into a foetal position on the bed. The crying has ceased, but my skin feels sore and my throat throbs. Taking one look at me, David drops his purchases on the floor and rushes towards me.

‘Whatever is the matter?’

Numbly, I hand him Anna’s memory book, pointing to the entry I have read and re-read so many times now that I could probably recite it verbatim. David rubs at his eyebrows as he scans the page, his expression softening as he takes in his late wife’s words.

‘Oh, Anna,’ he sighs. Then, almost as an afterthought, ‘God, I miss her.’

‘I do, too.’ The words are barely audible through our crushing misery. Or is it misery? Perhaps it is no longer that simple. It used to be sorrow at what happened, but now it feels more like frustration. I am so tired of the sadness, so very weary of carrying the weight of such a gigantic loss.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I tell him, gesturing to the book. ‘She wasn’t cross with me at all, just like you said she wouldn’t have been.’