I preferred to hear about her time in New Mexico, after Greg’s death. She’d lived in Taos, decades earlier, with a charming but violent sculptor. She said she’d longed to be back in the desert, breathing the pure, dry air and burning away the past. She’d worked at a pottery, and showed me the hideous jugs she’d made. And then, on her return, she’d fallen ill.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You’ve never had cancer,’ she said. ‘If you had, you wouldn’t ask that question.’

‘But I could’ve looked after you.’

‘You don’t understand.’ She sighed. ‘I needed all my strength, just to get through it. I couldn’t face you, of all people. You, sweetheart. My sister was there—she cared for me. I had to wait till I was strong, to come here.’

‘With Greg.’

‘With Greg.’

We gazed at the urn. It had been sitting on the mantel-piece for three weeks.

‘I think we should do something about him, don’t you?’

On New Year’s Day we scattered his ashes. We chose the beach at Deal.

By now I’d told the children about my new love affair. Max had reacted with his usual laconic: Great news, Mum, I hope you’ll be happy. Lucy had been astonished. But I thought you hated her! I’d tried to explain, but gave up. Skype is too inadequate for complex conversations, especially with a dodgy connection. I longed for them to be with me on the trip to Deal. We’d sit on the train, chatting and reading our books, just being normal, despite the significance of the occasion. I’d ruffle Max’s hair, even though it annoyed him, and hear Lucy’s corncrake laugh. We’d crunch across the beach together, gather up handfuls of their dad, and scatter him to the wind. We should have been together. Needless to say I’d offered to pay their airfare but they both said they were working over the New Year and that we’d make a plan to have a ceremony in the summer.

So it was just me and Azra, standing on the shoreline. It was raining, and suspiciously warm for January. What was happening to our climate? Angie was right—dear airhead Angie, murdered for her money. She’d done no harm in the world except to be beautiful and increase carbon emissions. And she’d understood what was happening—all of us with any sense understood that. Holding Greg’s urn, I was glad he’d been spared this ever-lengthening list of destruction that was now spiralling out of control. God knew how our children were coping with it. They’d been conceived in love and now were let loose in a world my husband and I had never envisaged when we’d lain together, sated with sex and surrounded by objects that were now in landfill.