He tells her instead to take him to where she found the bird in the first place. With one arm he scoops Coco onto his hip, then trudges across the crisp carpet of leaves and twigs after Gaia, who meticulously retraces her steps to the precise location where she found the baby bird at the foot of a towering pine tree.

‘I think I can see a nest!’ Gaia announces, craning her head so far back she almost falls over. ‘Up there, Daddy! I think its mummy is there, too.’

That the nest is there at all, much less with mother bird in situ awaiting the safe return of her lost chick, is unlikely. But Tom plays along, sharply aware that the bird’s rescue is accruing symbolic weight with each passing second, as though the crack in the planet caused by Aurelia’s death can be mended by returning this bird to its own family, its own mother. No matter how much he believes that he is able to accept this most terrible of losses he cannot undo the sensation of being mightily off-kilter, at once accelerated and freeze-framed, and he recognizes the sudden burst of longing in his daughter for things to be put right. For restoration.

Tom glances down at the bird in his hand. It is barely moving. His heart is heavy but he registers that Gaia is silently pleading with him to revive the nestling and return it to its mother. He catches himself right as he’s about to say something about how the mother bird will likely reject the bird anyway, given that it’s now bathed in his scent, but even as he opens his mouth he knows that such information will wound Gaia. For her the world is still a place where tragedy can be outdone by triumph. Where sorrow can be quenched by noble acts, and the long shadow of death can be outshone by love’s light. He is duty bound to protect the world in which Gaia lives, this world of untarnished hope and unicorns, for as long as he can.

‘Let’s take this fella into the house,’ he says. ‘Get him some water.’

Inside, Gaia sets about sourcing a cardboard box, which she lines with a cashmere scarf, a ping pong ball in case the nestling needs a toy, a Peppa Pig figurine, and a piece of Christmas tinsel.

‘What’s the tinsel for?’ Tom asks.

‘Decoration,’ Gaia replies earnestly. ‘To make her bed pretty.’

‘What’s Peppa Pig for?’

‘In case Dora gets lonely.’

‘Dora?’

‘That’s what I’ve named her.’

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘After the cartoon.’ He thinks about the endless reruns of Dora the Explorer, and the map song that has to be the worst earworm of all time.

‘No, Daddy,’ Gaia says, offended. ‘Not after Dora the Explorer! After Dora Carrington. The surrealist painter, remember?’

‘Oh. OK.’