Maybe I wasn’t there. That’s why I didn’t mention it earlier. Sometimes I had the feeling it had all been in my imagination. The person they were mourning was a stranger. Azra was wearing any old clothes and hadn’t even brushed her hair. My tomboy daughter wore a pill-box hat and veil—a veil. My son was fat. I can’t remember a single detail about the crematorium. Nor can I remember who was there, or if I talked to them. An air of unreality hung over the whole experience. Wetting one’s knickers was the stuff of nightmares—perhaps that was what it had been. Memory plays tricks on us all, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

It must have happened, surely, and there must have been a wake back at the cottage. I wasn’t there, however, because what I do remember is driving fast along a country lane, past a cornfield scattered with poppies like carelessly strewn drops of blood. The sun was sinking.

What I do remember is waking up in a single bed, my phone dead and my knickers dry. The twin bed next to mine lay shrouded in an unlovely mauve nylon quilt. Mauve was the theme throughout; on the wall hung a framed print of a lady in a crinoline. It all spoke B&B, which indeed it was.

My gorge rose and I knew I was going to be sick. I stumbled into the bathroom. The toilet was concealed by layers of what looked like petticoats—creamy rayon, creamy lace. I fought through them like a man rifling under a woman’s skirts, lifted the lid and vomited. Was this still a bad dream? For when I fumbled for the toilet roll it too was hidden beneath the skirt of a shepherdess, complete with bonnet and crook.

I tried to find the B&B a few days later, when I drove back to Dorset, but gave up. My children were certainly with me this time. My brain had cleared after what we called my mini breakdown and they’d forgiven me for disappearing so abruptly.

‘You were there and then you weren’t,’ said Lucy. ‘We just thought you couldn’t face the wake. But you could have told us. We were so worried, we were going to call the police!’

We were driving to Mortimer’s Creek to sort out the cottage. Greg had left it to Max and Lucy in his will. We’d long ago agreed that we would bypass each other as the world was tough and our children had more need of support than we did. Max and Lucy were in no state to decide anything just yet and planned to rent it out until they came to a decision.