I wished it were that simple. I wanted to tell her how it felt to be me. How it felt to be bereaved beyond enduring; to have one’s insides scraped out with a spoon like a turnip carved out for Halloween.

‘What’s your family name?’ I asked, out of forced politeness. ‘I’ll check the headstones.’

‘Eagles,’ she said. ‘Though I’ve married a Goose. There aren’t many women can say they’ve gone from an Eagle to a Goose and never flown. My John says I’m bird-brained, but he doesn’t mean it nasty.’

She waited for me to smile at her joke and I obliged. I lowered my book. Marked the page. Readjusted myself against the hard stone.

‘You’re from the Zealand place,’ she said. ‘Farm over the river. Mrs Winslow’s.’

I nodded, watching as her features realigned themselves.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your son,’ she said, looking down at the ground. I think her lip even quivered. ‘Horrible. Just so sad.’

I kept staring at her. I think I did it unkindly, so as to make her feel uncomfortable. I was full of venom, back then. Angry at everything. Hateful and spiteful. I was surrounded by so much blackness it felt like I was swimming through ink.

‘Thank you,’ I said, quietly, though my expression didn’t change.

‘How are you coping?’ she asked, putting her head on her own shoulder so she looked briefly like an injured chicken. ‘I wanted to come and bring you something but John said you’d no doubt have staff for that sort of thing. Are you on the mend?’

I gave a short, harsh laugh. It was a ridiculous question. My child was dead. The child I’d changed my life for. The child I’d given up everything to keep. Every day it felt as though I were wearing damp sheets around my skin and that my throat was being slowly dammed with smooth, cold stones. My existence was sorrow; my every thought an agony.

‘Not well,’ I said, and my face twitched. Just one rebellious muscle, high on my cheek, pulsing like a tiny heartbeat.

‘How old was he?’

‘Just under two.’

‘Awful,’ said Felicity. She sniffed, smearing the heel of her hand across her nose and eyes and shaking her head at herself as if in reprimand.

Tears have always undone me. I’m not one for crying. I can’t see the sense in it. I never feel any better for having squeezed out a few tears. But other people’s weeping is impossible to endure. I find myself overcome by pity. I pulled myself up without thinking about it. Before I knew it I was standing in front of her and offering a handkerchief which she took with a grateful smile.