I switch the telly back on, but they’re still talking about the death on the level crossing. Or rather, they’re talking about it again. That’s the trouble with breakfast TV; everything gets repeated on a loop and, if it’s something tragic, even more so. I turn it over to a different channel, but little Elodie’s face won’t leave my mind. It’s churned everything up again. I hate it when that happens.

3

The phone rings, but when I pick up and say hello, there’s no reply. Just a weird muffled noise in the background. The line goes dead. A minute later, it rings again.

“Hi, Lizzie, we’re just out of the Blackwall Tunnel. See you in a few minutes.” It’s Mum.

“Was that you just now?” I ask her, but the line starts breaking up so we say goodbye. It must have been her.

I wander from room to room, trying to picture the house through my parents’ eyes. They’re going to love it, I know they are.

Having spent the last twenty-odd years arranging their lives around my epilepsy, traipsing from one hospital appointment to another, endlessly waiting for test results and listening to the differing opinions of neurologists and epileptologists, it’s been hard for them to let go. It was hard for me, too, no matter how ready I was to strike out on my own. But they liked Ross as soon as they met him. His profession helped, of course. I’ve lost count of the number of times one or the other of them has said how pleased they are that I’m in “safe hands.”

Ross and I always laugh about that phrase. He’ll hold his hands out in front of him, palms up, and wriggle his fingers in a lewd gesture, as if he’s feeling me up. “Oh yes,” he says. “You’re definitely in safe hands with me.” But sometimes their use of it annoys me. It’s as if they think I’m a fragile parcel being handed from one owner to another. Maybe that’s another reason I don’t want to get married straightaway.

The sound of a car pulling up outside has me racing to the front door like a little girl. I’m surprised they managed to find a parking space so close to the house. Ross sometimes has to park all the way down the street. I watch them climb out of the car. They look as if they’re coming for a fortnight. Mum is festooned with an assortment of carrier bags and Dad’s opening the boot to bring out yet more stuff.

I walk down the path to greet them, glad that their visit coincides with this mild and sunny spring day, when everything looks so much brighter and nicer.

“What on earth is all this you’ve brought?”