He shuddered and said, ‘Bad.’

‘I know it’s hard, but Mummy wouldn’t want to see you like this. She loved your smile, Elliot. She loved to hear you laugh. She never liked to see you sad.’

‘I miss her so much, Dad,’ he replied.

‘Me too.’

A lump rose in my throat and I started to well up.

‘Me too,’ I croaked.

I sat there for a while, fighting my emotions. I can’t say how many minutes passed, but I stroked my son’s shoulder, trying to reassure him. I felt him tremble, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, because I knew the sight of his tears would destroy me. I railed against a universe that could be so cruel. Were we so important that our happiness had to be stolen? Could we not have gone unnoticed by fate?

We were insignificant creatures whose existence was of no consequence to gods or man.

What had we done to deserve this?

Even as those anguished thoughts overwhelmed me, I knew how pointless they were. Our insignificance was the very reason fate was blind to our happiness.

This was just one of those things. One of those terrible, ugly, brutal things.

‘It is what it is,’ say the gods, and the universe shrugs and moves on.

In a hundred years our suffering and tears and laughter and happiness will all be forgotten, replaced by another generation whose existences are equally transient and meaningless, and yet deeply meaningful and significant to them and those they love. Our ability to know we are nothing while perceiving we are everything has driven some mad, and it almost broke me during those dark days.

But it didn’t. I took deep breaths and stroked my son until I felt able to continue.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ I said at last. ‘I thought you might like to have this.’

I pulled Beth’s silver pendant and chain from my pocket, and Elliot turned round to look. His eyes were raw and streaks of long fallen tears marked his cheeks. I almost broke down, but told myself I had to be brave for him.

‘Your mum always wore it. When you were a baby, you used to play with it all the time. Here,’ I said, and I leaned down and fastened it around his neck.

The silver glinted in the light of his bedside lamp. He held the pendant and studied the moon, stars and the word ‘Beth’ closely.

‘She’ll always be with you, little man,’ I said, and I pulled him into a hug.

He sobbed and I did too, but I held him and stroked his back until he fell asleep.

Chapter 49

Elliot went back to school the next day. I took him on my way to work. Ben was right, we had to get back to some kind of normal, but it wasn’t easy.

I held the little man’s hand all the way through the car park. His village school was tiny, the sort of twee Victorian red-brick building that might have featured in a BBC costume drama, but we managed to make the distances seem vast because we walked so slowly. I don’t think either us of wanted to be parted from the other. We were all we had in the world. Some of Elliot’s friends passed us on the way, and they asked him to run in with them, but he didn’t want to let go, and neither did I.