While the children opened their presents I left Dorothy and Brian and climbed the stairs. The untidy rooms, strewn with toys and clothes, with favourite teddy bears rejected at the last minute, fixed the exact moment of our departure four weeks earlier. I stood by Miriam’s dressing table, looking down at the clutter of hairbrushes and cosmetics and a discarded tube of the previous summer’s suntan oil with its broken cap. Her fingerprints were set in the film of talc that covered the glass top, the ghost of her mouth in the red smear of a crushed tissue.

I opened the centre drawer, crammed with old phone bills, tampons, and school reports, faded brassieres held together with safety pins, and her faithful Dutch cap, like an unreliable family servant, for years the home of the spare car keys. I tipped the wastebasket onto the floor and sifted through the hair balls and tubes of contraceptive jelly, the torn suspender belt and fishnet stockings that she liked to wear at parties and later vamp around the bedroom. I lifted the stocking to my lips, smelling the scent of Miriam’s thighs, the same body scent that rose from the pillows and greeted me when I opened the wardrobe onto the racks of her dresses. Her hundred presences filled the house like a chorus of ghosts.

I needed to let them go. I opened the windows and watched the clouds of talc and dust drift through the air, repatriating themselves to Figueras. In the garden the children were chasing their old toys while Brian mowed the lawn. Alice was rearranging the furniture in the treehouse, casting out the cardboard tables and chairs as if spring cleaning before the arrival of a new domestic regime. Henry had found a still-inflated party balloon and was trying to stamp on it, while Lucy tested the swing, taking it up to a wild new altitude.

Watching them, I felt the first smile cross my lips. I knew that the children were braver than I was—during the long drive home they had never once mentioned their mother, the first of the many unspoken pacts which we made in the coming months. I sat on the bed, as the scents of Miriam’s body floated on the summer air.

Dorothy was carving the cold roast in the kitchen. She was three years older than Miriam, the more serious sister, a partner in a firm of Cambridge solicitors. At our wedding she had smiled and shaken her head as I kissed the bride, clearly doubting whether I would ever be a match for the high-tempered Miriam.

I drank a tumbler of duty-free whisky and hesitated before pouring another. Dorothy pressed my hand, refilling the glass.

“Go on—you’ve earned it. That must have been the most tremendous drive.”

“We were totally lost near Poitiers. I can tell you, Henry’s French saved the day. For one moment I thought of turning back.”