Library books. She checked the shopping trolley. Of course she’d put them there once she’d read them. Habit of a lifetime. She must be getting old. Forgetful. She had strategies against that. She kept herself busy, especially now, after retirement. ‘Never be bored,’ her father used to say. ‘But don’t be afraid to be idle.’ He was full of sayings. She thought of him every day, even though it was more than fifty years since he’d died. That’s how the dead lived on, became immortal. Who would remember her? She had no children of her own. ‘Dust to dust.’ That was what her father used to say. ‘Science gives us the answers. Who needs rabbis and priests?’

She played bridge competitively, practised compulsively, dealing herself tricks on the kitchen table and going to the club three nights a week. Trips to tournaments in Eastbourne or Scarborough. Choir every Thursday, taking the bus to Tufnell Park. She practised the clarinet, too, bought sheet music from Boosey & Hawkes in Regent Street. Dinner with Charles once a week when he came up from Kent, her place or a restaurant.

‘Why don’t we just live together,’ he’d say. ‘You don’t have to marry me.’

‘I like things the way they are.’

And her garden. That was her true joy. Weeding and pruning and cutting and trimming. It looked wild, but it wasn’t disordered.

La Ferme de l’Anse had wisteria, a gnarled, seasoned plant that hugged the front of the house and crowned in May. She could see it now, the magnificent scented pendants in shades of amethyst and purple. Roses too. Wild pink climbers in the hedgerows, standards in the border, white or burgundy with a heady perfume. She’d never recollected it before. She could feel the sweat under her arms, her trembling legs and hands. She gripped the edge of the table. Steady. Steady. Breathed deep. Pull yourself together.

Had her unconscious been trying to recreate it? A stem memory? Frail and unformed, now multiplying and morphing like a cancer cell. Was her garden nothing but a memento mori? Of what? A time?

A love?

A whole week had gone by. The scene at the front of the house could have been Brighton beach after a bank holiday. Pizza delivery boxes, scraps of tin foil, orange peel, juice cartons. Newspapers. Empty wine bottles. They were now required to put out their rubbish on the pavement, which meant the foxes had first pickings, before the dustmen came. She’d told her tenants again and again not to put unwanted food in the garbage. But they did. This was what greeted her every Wednesday morning. It was always Dora who had to clear up the mess.