‘Dad,’ I said, when I eventually located my phone. ‘Hi.’

‘All sorted?’

As ever, he was straight down to business. Sometimes I found it hard to believe that the father he had turned into was the same, formerly so laid-back one who carried me about on his shoulders when I was little.

‘I think so.’

‘You think so?’

I felt myself bristle.

‘We’ve done all we can for now,’ I added a little tartly. ‘We have a plan in place and I’ll pick it up again on Monday.’

‘Oh right,’ he said. ‘There was no way of wrapping it up tonight?’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I couldn’t reach any of the advertising team after ten, so we thought we’d call it a day.’

Truth be told, for the sake of my team’s sanity, I hadn’t tried to ring out again after our last in-house meeting of the evening.

‘And you’re sure you don’t want me to step in?’

‘Absolutely not.’

Of course, I didn’t want him to step in. How ridiculous would that make me look? He was quiet for a second and I held my breath. For an awful moment I thought he was going to say he was going to anyway.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ he eventually said.

I slowly breathed out and closed my eyes. Now I was the quiet one.

‘You still there, Tess?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, clearing my throat, ‘yes, I’m still here.’

It was me who had broached the subject of sorting through Mum’s things. It was me who had insisted we had to make time in our packed schedules to start properly going through everything. I had read somewhere that the process could be cathartic, offer some level of closure and I could definitely do with a dose of that, even just a small one.

Initially, Dad had kept saying that it wasn’t a good time, but I had quickly countered his argument by pointing out that it never would be and he had reluctantly agreed to setting the date for this weekend. It was ironic that after all my reading up on the subject, I was now the one who wasn’t ready.

It was now heading towards two years since Mum had died of a heart attack that no one had seen coming, but she was still everywhere. Her clothes still hung in the wardrobes, her jewellery was all laid out and sometimes, in her bathroom, I could still smell Chanel. It was utterly impossible to believe that she was gone for ever when her possessions appeared poised to welcome her back. It was impossible to believe that she was gone for ever when I hadn’t spent anywhere near enough time with her in recent years. Had I known the sand in her hourglass had all but run out I would have ensured things had been different.