She switched on the car’s internal light and, reaching into her bag, she pulled out her wallet to extract the photographs she always carried around with her though rarely looked at nowadays. Unlike a painting, a photograph must always be a memento mori: here is a moment that has gone, it says; here is a face that will never come again. Like this one, taken two years ago, of the whole family. Adrian was in the middle of the bunched group, the proud father. Squeezed possessively close beside him, Sasha looked very solemn, with that self-consciously noble look she adopted when she was trying to act especially grown-up; the responsible eldest child. Clem was standing to attention like a soldier; her hair stood up in a startled bristle and her cheeks were rather red. Aggie was squirming away from the camera and her face was blurred. And then … but Irene put the photo back in her wallet hurriedly. Not now, she thought; don’t go there now, in the middle of the night, alone, in a clearing in a forest in the south of France.

Here was one of Sasha and Clem on the beach at Wittering. Sasha was squatting beside a skewed sandcastle in a pair of blue shorts and a bikini top and moulding the walls with the flats of both hands; Clem, quite naked with a round white belly and sunburned shoulders, stood beside her holding aloft a large yellow spade which, a few seconds after the photo was taken, she had whacked violently onto Sasha’s shoulders. Knowing that, Irene could see the approaching moment in her expression: cunning and already triumphant. Here was one of Aggie learning to walk, her legs like rubber bands and on her face a look of ferocious concentration. Moments, thought Irene. We just remember in moments, and then link them together to make up our version of a life. You have to choose the right ones to carry around in your head. She took another gulp of wine, which was pouring more smoothly now.