‘This is it,’ she said, whispering so as not to disturb the silence. I was surprised that she knew.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked to delay.

‘Yup.’

We walked out of the garden and on to the next section. Francis’s plot was three rows in from the edge of the path. The grass here needed cutting, and soaked the cuffs of my trousers with rainwater and mud when I left the road. I found myself wishing that I had put on jeans. My suit would need dry cleaning. Francis’s grave was marked by an extravagantly expensive monument of pink Florentine marble. The large square block was carved on three sides with a relief showing what looked like art-deco angels gazing into the invisible interior, their muscular backs and wings on display, whilst the fourth side bore detail chosen by a virtual stranger, the dates of his life, his full name (excluding Nyasha) and the suspect epitaph of ‘beloved son and brother’. They were cut into the marble and picked out in gold. I remembered at the wake overhearing Lord Soulford telling a mourner that it had cost him the best part of twenty thousand, that he had commissioned an up-and-coming young artist. All things considered, his beloved son proved considerably less expensive in death than he had done in life.

The turf had been neglected. I remembered the grave as a gaping hole in the earth with straight surgical edges, but the wound had healed over with grass and grown a little wild. The other plots stretched away in all directions. Standing at the intersection of the rows the geometry of the pattern revealed itself, and the headstones looked like pieces set out on a giant board. A generous bunch of white roses lay on the grave. There were droplets and tiny pools of rainwater on their plastic sheath. I looked for a card but could not see one. The moisture and the cold must have helped to keep them fresh, but I guessed they could not be much more than two or three weeks old. I felt deeply cheated. It was as if we had climbed to a distant, uninhabited peak, and found the place strewn with discarded Coke cans. I would have liked to pick them up, shake the heads off them and fling them away. As I felt this surge of emotion, I could not help but analyse its source. I realized how possessive I had become over my isolation. I hated the thought that I was not mourning alone, it chipped away at the sombre statue I had made in my image. In death, Francis was my virgin bride. I could not stand the thought of sharing him with this unknown other. I tried to think of what Jessica must be feeling, looking at the grave of our friend, to invite her into my sadness. She exhaled, and I realized she had been holding her breath.

‘I wonder who still puts flowers here,’ she said. She sounded a little ashamed. She sniffed. The cold was making her nose run.