I won’t bore you with Alex Graham’s funeral. As always, my attention kept straying. Why does this happen in church, more than anywhere else?

1. Did I feed the cat?

2. Are the sachets better for the environment than tins?

3. Shit. I’ve forgotten my goddaughter’s birthday.

4. Did I forget last year?

5. Shit.

6. What’s the point of godmothers anyway? Now I’m close to you, Jesus, will you tell me?

7. Why are printer-ink cartridges so expensive?

8. What are they going to think of Calvin?

I tried to concentrate on Alex, whom I’d first glimpsed leaning against that lamppost in 1981. He’d become an avant-garde composer whose largely incomprehensible music was played late at night on Radio 3. Sitting in my pew I watched his daughter, Philomena, now a middle-aged matron, perform one of his tone poems on her oboe. In those golden days, that endless summer when we were young, she was my daughter’s best friend. Her brother, Benji (‘Bean’), had been Max’s mate. Bean was now a consultant gastroenterologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. They certainly seemed more grown-up than I was.

‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’ We used to love that song. Craning my neck, I recognised various friends from that era, some of them still my neighbours in Muswell Hill. It seemed only yesterday that we were young and slim, having supper parties, flirting with each other and working on our allotments, our babies lying beside us in their Moses baskets, our most precious crop.

My eyes filled with tears. Various people were crying. I thought: it’s not just for Alex.

Beside me, Calvin pushed back his cuff and looked at his watch.

We emerged into blazing sunshine. Sweat broke out under my black dress. Summer had arrived while we were inside listening to Alex’s favourites—Emily Dickinson, Schubert, Nina Simone. The usuals.

The family lived in the old rectory next to the church. It had a large walled garden. Food and drink were laid out on tables under the trees, with artlessly arranged jugs of wild flowers. Tangle-haired granddaughters ran around, wearing the obligatory angel dresses that kept tripping them up. There was a great deal of hugging.

Bethany, the widow, held me tight. ‘How are you, Pru? You’ve had an awful time, too.’

I told her I was fine and introduced her to Calvin.

She gazed at him with awe. ‘It was you who drove the helicopter?’

‘It’s flew, love,’ he said.

‘We could hear it inside the church. So thrilling. Have a glass of fizz.’

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m driving.’

She laughed, and gave me a significant look.

I said: ‘It’s so funny coming by helicopter, missing all the normal stuff like traffic and whatnot, and just landing in the middle of a field. Like sex without the foreplay.’