They were in a white envelope. Eva showed it to him without opening it. He knew, from the look on her face, that this was the moment when he could help. They sat side by side, their backs leaning against the wall, their shoulders not touching. Then Eva opened the envelope and pulled out the printed photos that Avigail had decided to save.

The one on top was a photograph of their house, taken from the back garden looking in, on a summer’s day when the yellow rhododendrons were in bloom. The French windows leading into the living room were thrown open and the angle of the shot led you inside, through the long room of wood floors and flowing light. Eva glanced at him, lifted the photo from the top of the stack to place it at the back.

There were group shots next – old and unfamiliar to Piotr, but Eva seemed to recognise them. She smiled, softly, reached out a finger to touch her mum’s face, the decades-old images of her mum’s friends who had made her childhood so colourful.

‘That’s Ina,’ she said, showing him one. ‘She was my mum’s best friend.’

Piotr smiled at the photo of them, arms round each other, Avigail and Ina, both with long flowing hair, Avigail’s red and Ina’s grey.

There were photos of Eva when she was a teenager, dressed in tie-dye like her mum, with dangly earrings and frizzy hair. In one she was wearing faded denim shorts and thick black tights, a flowery purple shirt tied in a knot at the waist, DM boots laced halfway with orange laces and graffitied with swirls of bright paint and glitter glue. And then the images became more recent.

He’d known it was coming, of course.

First there was a photo Eva had taken one Christmas, Piotr and Avigail sitting either side of the dining table with paper hats on – Piotr’s balanced precariously on top of his head. It was too small to fit on properly; his head was too big. On the table were the remnants of pulled crackers, Christmas pudding half eaten and swimming in brandy. Eva touched the image, passed it to him. He took it, held it, and waited.

A photo they’d taken in Norfolk, both of their faces too close to the lens, behind them a view of the beach, white satin, windswept and overexposed. It looked like there were smudges, like something had been spilled on the picture. She passed it to him by the edges and he took it too eagerly – his thumb went into the frame, leaving a clumsy thumbprint on the paper. He kept hold of it though, placing it neatly on top of the Christmas dinner before looking up for the next photo.