Mary asks, ‘How do you think my grandchildren are?’

Oli blows out the last of the smoke, adjusting her grip on the umbrella. ‘They seem okay.’

‘Strange little girls.’

Oli shifts her eyes sideways. Mary looks like she’s in a trance. A sparrow drops from a nearby tree and hops madly along the grass to Isabelle’s grave, where it dances in tiny circles.

‘They miss her,’ blurts Oli, tears welling in her eyes. ‘They really miss their mother.’

Mary turns to look at her.

Oli wipes her eyes, mortified. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m getting upset.’

Looking back at the grave, Mary says, ‘Well, if you’re going to cry, this is the place, Olivia.’

Oli doesn’t bother to correct her. ‘I guess so.’

‘And it can’t be easy for you. My Isabelle was quite the package.’

Oli’s tongue is thick in her mouth. ‘Was she happy?’ she asks quietly. ‘With Dean?’

Mary makes an odd snorting sound and leans back against the wooden slats. ‘Was she happy? No, no, I don’t think she was. But she was very private, even with me.’

‘Did she ever say she was going to leave him?’

‘No.’ Mary shakes her head. ‘Not explicitly, but I’m sure she thought about it. Deep down they were really quite different. And things had been strained ever since the IVF.’

Oli blinks.

‘Probably before that, really,’ Mary muses. ‘Dean worried about her police work. It was one of the only things he and I agreed on.’

‘He said she was thinking of quitting,’ Oli manages to say.

‘I doubt that,’ Mary says dismissively. She crosses her legs. ‘Anyway, I suppose you’ll want to have your own children. How old are you anyway, thirty-five?’

‘Thirty-nine,’ Oli murmurs.

Mary makes a sympathetic sound. ‘Will you try IVF?’

A man, woman and teenage girl walk across the grass a few metres away, heads bent, faces grim. The man is holding a bunch of daffodils.

‘I don’t, I’m not …’ Oli stops, suddenly conscious of how bizarre this conversation is.

The man places the flowers on top of a grave, and the teenage girl wraps an arm around him.

‘Well,’ sniffs Mary, ‘I must admit infertility is not a topic I’m very familiar with. I got pregnant just looking at William.’ She points past Isabelle’s grave. ‘He’s over there. Been dead for almost twenty years now.’ With another sniff, she adds, ‘Both my older girls were the same, pregnant at the drop of a hat. And I’m sure Isabelle would have been like that too.’

The man is crying now, his shoulders shaking as he kneels on the grave in front of the daffodils.

‘But she wasn’t.’ Oli’s blood is ice.