“For the funeral?” I can see Jonathan in the hotel room in Cairo. “But you know it was impossible. I tried everything—”

She’s shaking her head. “I meant before. For longer than a couple of days every third Christmas.”

I chose to ignore the bitterness. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.” My throat is tight.

“Maybe.” It’s not an agreement; there’s a stubbornness to the word. It hangs between us and refuses to budge. I take a sip of tea in silence. “I’m sorry,” she offers, after a moment. “I’m just tired. I know it’s different for you; I know it’s always been different. But I miss her. I know you do too.”

I nod slowly. “Yes. But I don’t—I don’t have the words for it.” I think for some reason of my mountain of a Scottish lawyer. I’m sorry about your mum, he said in a thick gravelly brogue. You must miss her. It sounded like an order: must I? And then I found that, in fact, I did. How odd that the gap that’s left is larger than the space that was occupied. “I don’t know how to help. You or me.”

She’s smiling again, but the rueful edge has gone. “I like that you want to.” I like that you want to. It’s a simultaneous warm hug and a cold glass of water to the face. Both steal my breath. But why should she be able to rely on my good intentions? I’ve never been around to be relied upon before. She’s yawning again. I fight to keep my voice even. “You’re done in. Go on up to bed; I’ll lock up.”

“Yep.” She pauses by the door on her way out. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Sleep well.” The radio is still playing, giving the illusion of company, but I’m no longer in a kitchen in Scotland. I can feel the cool of the hotel room in Cairo, the shade inside in contrast to the brightness framed by the linen curtains, like an old sepia photograph set against a saturated digital image. I can see Jonathan in profile bent over the desk, irritably trying to reach over the back of it to plug in his laptop. We have to go, I tell him urgently. We can’t wait this out; we have to take a car, a boat, whatever. We’ll have to go overland to England. He looks across at me, startled, a lock of his gray hair flopping onto his forehead and his hands still busy with the plug. I can’t go too. I have to be in DC, he says. She wasn’t my mother.