Tegan grabs Alice’s hand as they head into the hallway; her fingers ice-cold. ‘I have your back, sweetie,’ she says, and throws open the front door to a flash of cameras. ‘We’ll get through this,’ she goes on, ushering Alice down the winding path towards the waiting shiny black car.

‘Did you know your father was Membrose?’ ‘Have you seen the films?’

‘Are you creative like your dad, Alice?’ ‘I hear Netflix are interested in making a series out of one of his books.’ ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you, Miss Hadley?’ ‘Gothic sculptures?’

‘Leave me alone,’ Alice cries, as she bends down to get into the back seat of the car, fighting back an army of tears behind her eyes.

‘We’ll get through this, Alice,’ Tegan repeats, before closing the door and dashing to the other side to get in.

But Alice isn’t sure how she’ll cope.

*

The crematorium is rammed. Some people Alice recognises: her father’s publishers; his neighbours; Leon, but most she doesn’t know: strangers who knew her father through his words, sharing her grief.

The man the celebrant describes is a stranger. Alice’s fault to some degree – she didn’t provide enough information for her to go on. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to.

And now she’s walking up to the podium on weak legs, gripping the speech she prepared in shaking hands.

Her efforts start well, as she talks about her father’s brilliant sense of humour, his creativity, how she loved being home-educated by him, how he made learning so much fun. She doesn’t say that however much she loved him, she was often lonely – rattling around Butterfly Cottage playing make-believe with her dolls – while he was absorbed in his writing.

‘He wouldn’t let me read his novels in my early teens,’ she says. ‘“Far too dark,” he would say, totally unaware that I secretly read them under my duvet with a torch in the middle of the night, and scared myself silly.’ A tinkle of laughter fills the crematorium, giving Alice time to clear her throat and take a breath. ‘He was a wonderful man,’ she goes on. ‘And a good dad. I feel honoured and incredibly lucky to have been part of his world, when so few were invited in.’ The words she’s written blur through sudden tears. She knows she can’t go on. ‘I will miss him desperately,’ she says, picking up her scribbled notes, and returning to her seat.

After the service, Tegan grips Alice’s arm, and leads her from the building to the sound of Cher’s ‘If I could turn back time’ – one of her father’s favourite songs.

Outside, grey clouds skitter across the watery sun. Alice has organised a buffet at the local pub, but she can’t face it.