Cover

Dedication

For Marianne Gunn O’Connor, with love

1

I was walking the dogs along the footpath beside the River Avon when my sister, Martha, called to tell me that Anna DeLuca had died.

It was April. The air was cool, the tide was out and I was alone. The dogs sniffed the grassy fringes of the path, while I held the phone to my ear and listened as Martha described how my former mother-in-law had passed away peacefully in a sunlit room in a hospice in south London. As she spoke, I watched a boy cycling towards me. He was fourteen or fifteen, dark haired, slightly built. He could have been Daniel. I stepped aside as he passed. He stood on the pedals to keep the bike steady, leaned over the handlebars and nodded his thanks. He was wearing school uniform: rolled up shirtsleeves, a jumper tied around his waist, black shoes with scuffed toes, mud on the knees of his trousers. His cheeks were flushed with exertion.

‘It was a lovely room,’ Martha said, ‘and Cece said the staff were angels. She said it was a good death. All the family were there.’

I watched the back of the boy, cycling away from me. The jumper flapped behind him.

‘Edie?’ Martha asked. ‘Did you hear me?’

I would have liked to tell her about the boy who looked like Daniel, but I knew if I did she would make the face she always made when I told her about something that reminded me of my son. Even though I couldn’t see her, I’d know that was what she was doing.

A silence grew between us. Martha was expecting me to say that I was sorry about Anna’s death or to ask her to pass on my condolences to Cece, but I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t bring myself to say it was all for the best, or that at least it was an end to Anna’s suffering, or some other cliché. I’d spent ten years picking at my hatred for Anna and the wound was deep and bloody. I could hardly say something kind about her now.

I watched the boy on the bike riding through the tunnel made by the overhanging branches of trees. He went around a bend and disappeared.

‘Was Joe there?’ I asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘Was Joe with Anna when she died?’

‘Yes, I just said, all the family were. He’s spent a lot of time with his mother over the last few weeks.’