Anna would have liked a little more than the two minutes Gayle had allotted to work out what she’d wanted to write because when she’d stared at the blank strip of faux parchment (Gayle never did anything by halves), she just couldn’t make her brain work. She’d kept staring at it up until the last ten seconds, and then she’d scribbled ‘I love you’ and stuffed the paper in the bottle. Heartfelt. True. But not very eloquent. Also, not the ‘goodbye’ she’d been revving up to. How could she rush that?

And then they were hurried on to the next place of significance to everyone but Anna and Teresa, now almost six months pregnant, who was waddling up and down the dunes without a squeak of protest. It would make Anna look bad if she said anything.

She tuned out her mother-in-law’s voice, let it become part of the background noise, like the squawking of the seagulls, as she tried to find that still place in her heart where she could talk to Spencer, tell him what she’d wanted to say today. She’d just about gained the right amount of focus to start when Gayle clapped her hands and announced, ‘Well, I think it’s time we got to the most important part of the afternoon, the reason we chose to come here this year… Richard, have you got the bag?’

Richard, who’d hardly said a word since they’d arrived, nodded. Anna’s attention was drawn once again to the canvas shopper he was carrying. He’d been lugging it around all over the dunes. What exactly was inside it?

He held the bag up to Gayle and she reached in and reverently pulled out a small pewter urn. The kind with a lid. The kind used for…

But, no. That couldn’t be right.

‘We’ll walk out to the shore now the tide’s out,’ Gayle said, ‘and then Richard and Scott can scatter the ashes in the sea.’

Ashes?

She can’t have just said that, Anna thought, even though the urn in Gayle’s grip was evidence to the contrary, but she hardly had time to process that before Gayle added, ‘We’re all agreed this is the right place?’ There were murmurs and nods of agreement as Gayle looked from person to person. ‘This is where he would have chosen if it had been up to him.’ And then she shifted her gaze to Anna.

‘Ashes?’ Anna echoed weakly. It was the only word going around her head at that moment.

Gayle nodded.

‘Spencer’s ashes?’

Teresa shot a nervous look at her mother-in-law and then her husband. Scott was busy studying an abandoned plastic spade half-buried in the sand and didn’t seem inclined to glance up.

Gayle stood a little straighter. ‘Yes.’

‘But Spencer’s ashes are in the Garden of Remembrance at the crematorium!’

Gayle’s stare didn’t waver. ‘Your half of them are. Our half are here…’ She patted the urn in her hands gently. ‘And we’re going to scatter them in my son’s happy place, the place where he had most joy.’