‘Have you talked to him?’ she asked, and I shook my head. ‘Well, that’s the first step. Say hello! God, Abs. It’s not that difficult. He’s a human being, not an alien, and in the shop you have the perfect excuse. When he next comes in, I want you to be the one who serves him. Okay?’

And so she coached me through it: what to say, how to be, and, eventually, how to ask him out. On her advice, I suggested, in a voice tight with nerves, a coffee to discuss an exhibition at Tate Modern.

‘Sure,’ he shrugged, peering at me with those nut-brown eyes as if for the first time. And Grace was right, of course: that coffee segued into a visit to Tate Modern, and then to a lunch, drinks, more drinks, and dinner. Before long, we were ‘dating’ as Grace so quaintly put it, but Tom didn’t like to call it that. He was a Buddhist and didn’t like to be tied down.

‘Upadhi dukkhassa mūlanti,’ he’d say, holding his hands up, if I tried to push him into any type of commitment. ‘Attachment is the root of suffering. Let’s just exist in the moment. In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you,’ and so I learned not to ask too many questions about what he did when we were apart, and we co-existed alongside each other very well.

I didn’t deserve Tom, of course, but I cared about him. A lot.

Twenty

I dashed into the hospice a hair past eight that morning, the painting of Bruce tucked in my bag. I was pleased with it – as pet portraits went, it was one of my best.

It was my job at the hospice to make sure the patients had enough water, to clear away any old cups, and make hot drinks for anyone that wanted them. That early in the morning, there were just a couple of visitors – it didn’t usually get busier till later, once the school day finished. It was only then, from about four-thirty, that you’d start to see the procession of worn mums and dads bringing their kids, scruffy from school, to see ailing grandparents for what could well be the last time.

‘Morning!’ I said to Moira, the head nurse who was, for once, actually standing still behind the desk. She was a powerhouse in the hospice, the engine of the place, with a heart so big I often wondered how it fit inside the whip-thin body that encased it. She was also a mother to four kids under six; we were all familiar with their impish smiles because she had their photo in a frame on the desk.