‘Oh, don’t worry about having green fingers.’ He lifts his hands in protest as Chloe shuffles from foot to foot. ‘There ent much you need to know. First of all, take a look at the soil.’ He picks up some and rubs it between his fingertips; his fingers are a reddish purple, the years having hardened them against the cold. ‘The type of plants that will grow and thrive all depend on the soil at your feet. You want to think, is it gritty, sandy, or does it form a solid mass – like clay?’

Chloe shuffles on the gravel path.

‘You could have a lovely perfumed rose bush here,’ the old man continues, ‘or annuals, lots of bright colours. You could plant them every summer and then . . . whoop, up they’d come in spring. Cheer the place up a bit. And don’t matter about nature, worms keep the soil aerated, birds eat the greenfly, only thing you don’t really want are ants’ nests – millions of them you’ll have, all those tiny creatures hard at work underneath, yet never a good look crawling all over the soil. My Irene can’t stand the things – can’t say I blame her. Anyway, talking of Irene, she’ll be wondering where I got to. I’d better stop chatting and get off.’

Chloe watches him cross the garden to pick up a trowel he’d left by Katy’s grave. He pats the top of the stone as tenderly as if it were his lost granddaughter’s own warm head, then follows the gravel path out towards the exit, lifting his arm as if he knows she’s watching.

Chloe turns back to the stone then. She takes one daffodil and trims the stem with her fingernails, leaving it inside the vase, then hurries back up the gravel path towards Nan.

She turns left at the top, retracing her steps, just as she had taken them a few moments before. Only something is different. Her eyes scan the cemetery, quickly, then frantically. She spins on the spot, looks behind her, in case she had taken a wrong turn. But she knows this place. She wouldn’t make a mistake. But then, if she hadn’t, something is missing. That’s the moment when the dread begins to swell inside, starting in the soles of her feet and spreading right up to the top of her head, collecting with it her blood, the sound of which bangs inside her eardrums.

‘Nan!’ she calls out to the empty cemetery. She is nowhere to be seen.

Chloe spins this way and that. She squints, staggering between the headstones, sure that she’ll see it, that flash of navy – Nan’s parka – but there is just grass and stillness, the odd petal that has blown in from the latest floral tribute.

‘Nan!’