‘I certainly didn’t expect to see you here.’

Oli whirls around.

Mary Masterton is staring at her daughter’s grave, lips pursed. She is dressed for another era, or perhaps another setting. The collar of her ivory blouse is high under a navy blazer; jodhpurs grip her slender legs, and tiny gold buckles sit on each side of her leather boots. Sharp cheekbones stand to attention, her thick dark hair glossy and curling obediently against her neck.

Oli wipes coffee from her sleeve and wrist, her pulse racing.

‘Or maybe it makes perfect sense.’ Mary marches over to the bench and sits down with such force that it shakes.

‘I’m sorry.’ Oli doesn’t know what else to say. How can she explain the urge that brought her here? ‘The twins told me you come here on Sundays.’

Mary clenches her jaw and doesn’t say anything.

Oli falters. ‘Should I go?’

‘Stay.’ It feels like an order.

‘I don’t really know why I’m here,’ Oli admits.

‘That, at least, is obvious.’ Mary’s tone is droll. ‘I suspect it has something to do with confronting the ghosts in your life.’

Oli feels disoriented, as if she’s on the verge of waking from a vivid dream.

‘Do you smoke?’ Mary pulls a packet from her jacket pocket, lights one and raises a groomed eyebrow.

Oli stutters. ‘I used to, a long time ago.’

‘It’s like riding a bike. You’ll remember.’ Mary holds out a cigarette.

Oli accepts it and tilts forward so Mary can light the tip. Their eyes lock; hers are the same pale blue as her daughter’s and granddaughters’. The cigarettes are strong, and Oli retches slightly as the smoke hits her lungs. ‘God, this takes me back,’ she says in an attempt to keep up the façade of being a non-smoker.

‘To happier times?’ inquires Mary.

Oli shrugs awkwardly.

‘I found marijuana in her schoolbag when she was fifteen,’ says Mary, squinting at Isabelle’s grave. ‘I was so angry, I grounded her for a month.’ Mary sucks hard on the cigarette, her carefully lipsticked mouth puckering like that of a fish. ‘Of course, I couldn’t care less what she smoked now, as long as she was here.’

‘I can’t imagine,’ Oli says feebly, struggling to align this knowledge with the pure mental image she has of Isabelle.

Mary snorts politely, dropping the butt onto the dirt and smothering it with her heel. ‘I didn’t want her to be a cop either. Problem was, she was too old to be grounded by then.’

A raindrop hits the tip of Oli’s cigarette, which fizzes softly.

‘Bloody hell.’ Mary hisses at the sky.

‘Wait here.’ Oli runs to the car, grabs a golf umbrella from the boot and holds it above the two of them. She finishes her cigarette and drops it on the ground next to Mary’s. Extinguishes it with her shoe.