Rosas and the lizard-ridged rocks of Cape Creus fell behind us as we set off for Figueras and the French border. The resort beaches of the Costa Brava, the hotels and cafés slid past through a dream more lurid than any of Dalí’s paintings, a vision of the world’s end seen in terms of polluted sand, the stench of sun oil, and terraces of overexposed flesh. We passed the entrance to the municipal cemetery at Figueras and the long corridor of cypresses leading to the whitewashed walls and the ornate porticos of the family tombs. Miriam was buried in the adjacent Protestant cemetery, a flowerless boneyard where a few anticlerical Spaniards rested under modest stones beside an English youth drowned in a yachting accident. Looking back for the last time, I turned north towards the Pyrenees, France, and home.

The children sat behind me, playing compulsive games all the way to the Channel. Henry was too stunned to speak, but Alice and Lucy soon took charge. Already they were more concerned for me than they were for themselves. Mile after mile, they helped me with the road maps and chose hotels for our overnight stops, and kept a careful watch on the whisky bottle I held between my thighs. Their good sense and cheer laid the foundation on which we rebuilt our lives together.

During the drive I could remember only my last moments with Miriam and the burial service at the cemetery. Nature had committed a crime against my young wife and her children, and I felt a deep, confused anger not merely at myself, for bringing Miriam to Rosas, but at the vine-covered hills, the plane trees, and the grazing cattle. An hour after she died a fierce peace had come over Miriam as she lay in the emergency room at Figueras hospital. Her head was flung back, her chest braced upwards, and her lips gaped in a rictus that exposed the livid muscles of her mouth and throat. Her jaw thrust itself at me from the blue skin, teeth set in a scream of death. Steadied by Nordlund, I walked to the cathedral-like Figueras undertakers. We moved through the lines of ornate gothic coffins that resembled pews facing a profane altar of black marble headstones. Thinking of Miriam, I decided it only fitting that she should be consigned to the earth in a casket like a prop from a horror film.

But later that evening, when I returned to the hospital, a complete change had come over her. All the pain and fear of her last moments, as her stricken brain collapsed inwards upon itself, had passed. Her face had relaxed, and her skin was soft and white again. A nurse had combed her hair for me, and her cheeks and lips were as small and neat as a little girl’s, giving me a last glimpse of her vanished childhood.