Back outside, we walk along the lake. The evening has cooled as the sun slips towards the horizon, as if tired after this long day.

The longest day.

In the distance, singing. I use my hand as a visor and peer ahead.

Yes. Definitely singing. Young people, it sounds like, their voices high and joyous and defiant, more interested in being heard than being in tune.

Up ahead, through the gaps of the evening strollers, they come into view.

Dancing as well as singing, most of them in bare feet, all in brightly colored robes, walking in messy procession along the path, banging on drums and triangles, shaking maracas and tambourines.

Hare Krishnas.

I haven’t seen them in such numbers in years.

There is something so positive and cheerful about them. Even Dad, who keeps asking when we are going home, is smiling. They’re infectious. Also, they have cake.

One of them sings and dances her way towards Dad, holding a huge wedge of chocolate cake in her hand, which she hands to him. He accepts it and I try not to think about germs and contamination and general food hygiene issues. In fact, when she hands me the wedge she holds in her other—bare—hand, I say thank you—actually I say danke—and then I steer it into my mouth and keep pushing until I can fit in no more.

It’s delicious. Sweet and sticky and dense with chocolate. Dad holds up his fingers, which are smeared with icing. I look in my handbag, but I have finally run out of tissues. “Lick them,” I say. I have to shout to be heard over the singing, which is all around us now. It’s like being in the middle of a song. Not necessarily a great song. An enthusiastic song. Like a Eurovision song. Dad and I stand in the middle of the song, licking our fingers clean, regardless of germs and contamination and general food hygiene issues.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Dad shouts over at me.

“Neither do I,” I say, and this strikes both of us as funny and we stand there, in the middle of the song, and laugh and some of the Hare Krishnas form a circle and hold hands and dance around us and a memory ignites in my head, like a match. A birthday party. For my sixth birthday, maybe. Musical statues. And Dad was there, dancing with me. Spinning me and lifting me and twirling me. Me, squealing with excitement and dizziness and attention. And Mam putting her hand on his arm, stilling him with a hissed whisper and the laugh fading from his face so that I was reminded of a sky darkening for a storm and him shrugging her hand off his arm and leaving the room, then leaving the house. The slam of the front door. The cough of the engine turning over and then he was gone and the music stopped so that we all froze like statues. Even Mam, when I looked at her. Her bright smile frozen on her face, her eyes on the window through which I could hear the wail of the engine, fading.