‘Rosie?’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. ‘It’s Nana. It’s your nana. Can I come in?’

There was no lock on the bedroom, but Holly understood that the closed door had to be respected. She wouldn’t step inside until invited. But she would no longer wait to be called, and she wasn’t above listening in either. She moved the tray out of the way so she could position her ear a little closer to the door.

‘Rosie?’ she whispered again, louder this time, and prepared herself for the sound of her granddaughter’s sobs.

But she couldn’t hear a voice inside, or any crying. All she could hear was a very faint tapping like … she didn’t know what it was like. She couldn’t place the sound. It was rhythmical, or perhaps like scraping. She leaned closer to the door.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’

Daphne was standing behind her on the stairs. Holly straightened her back, groaning, and turned to face her daughter. Daphne had been the only one of them who didn’t break down in the hospital, who had not screamed at the doctors or demanded answers, but silently held Rosie as she wept. When they’d come round earlier, talking about an autopsy, Daphne had dealt with them – she’d invited them in, thanked them for returning her car, made coffee, sat with them at the kitchen table while Rosie and Kaz forced themselves to make a decision upstairs.

Holly hadn’t been a part of that conversation, she didn’t know who said what, but she knew that eventually they’d both spoken with the FullLife director. Rosie had refused to leave her room since and Kaz had come down, red-eyed and vacant, to tell them they’d decided to proceed with the autopsy. When he returned from FullLife he hadn’t gone up to Rosie’s room. He’d gone outside and started on her silver birch.

She prided herself on being the one to open her arms to all her family, to help her children and grandchildren through everything they had to go through. If Rosie fell over as a girl, it was her nana’s comforting hug she ran to. If she was in trouble at school, her nana would hear about it first. After Kaz proposed, Rosie had offered to cook dinner for the whole family, to bring everyone together for the announcement, but before dinner she’d crept up to her nana’s bedroom and told her what she was going to tell the others – that she was in love, and she was getting married, and Kaz was the sweetest, kindest man she’d ever met. And funny, she’d said, and musical – have you heard him play, Nana? Holly had smiled; she’d heard him at school concerts over the years. She knew, and liked, the man that her granddaughter loved.

‘I just wanted to tell you first, Nana,’ she’d said.