A look of sadness passes over her face like the shadow of a cloud. I wish I were able to tell her she is well. The truth is I can’t. The last we heard from her was a postcard, written to tell us she’d had a second son and they were moving from central Melbourne to the suburbs to give the boys a better standard of living, in a house with a garden in an area with a sense of community. She said she would forward the new address but never did. The card shared only the scantest of facts – didn’t even give the name of the baby – but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say she was well. So I nod.

‘Do you think she misses me?’

‘I’m sure she does.’

My own mother is still alive. I rarely see her. We speak occasionally on the phone but it isn’t the same as seeing her in person. She won’t visit. She makes up an array of elaborate excuses but the simple truth is she doesn’t know what to say to us or how to be comfortable here. She doesn’t understand. We unnerve her.

I saw Ted last week. He was visiting his son who now runs the shop. He was old and frail, hands knotted with arthritis, but his eyes still twinkled. He told me Gareth bloody Spence recently married. His new bride, twice divorced, is from Swansea and makes curtains for a living, which, according to Ted, are fancy ones for London folk with frills and lace and nonsense like that. I didn’t ask Ted how he knows all this. Of course, he asked after my mother and I told him she was doing well.

I walk over to the wardrobe and retrieve the silk scarf. I wrap it around my body, tie it like she used to. As I do the smell descends around me. Thick and putrid and horribly familiar. My skin bristles and I close my eyes.

It isn’t real, I tell myself again. Eleanor. The smell. Her voice. None of it. The doctor had told me severe anxiety may cause all manner of hallucinations. Then she asked me about my father’s death and I could tell what she was getting at.

Grief had ruined me.

I sense Eleanor approaching. Feel her standing behind me. Her breath is icy on the back of my neck. I tense. Ready myself to face her. When I do I inhale sharply and my hands clench at my sides. She is behind me, her face reflected in the mirror, half-rotted, bloated, the skin patchy and bleached, lips tinged blue. Her eyes are glassy and her sodden hair hangs in rats’ tails.

‘The scarf suits you.’

My eyes prickle with tears.

‘And the bracelet too.’