A chasm of a pause. ‘Dad. Clare . . . She . . .’ It is impossible to know what to say. ‘How are you getting on?’

‘We’ve all had a bit of a cry.’

I wonder if, after all these years, this is the moment to hug him. No. He wouldn’t know how to respond. I follow him over the dark kilim rugs in the hall, past the grandfather clock and bold screen prints of iconic London buildings – my mum’s creations – and up the stairs to the sitting room, from where I can hear the low hum of family and friends paying their respects.

This is not a small affair. My parents have summoned the clan, and more. They are perched on sofa-arms, leaning against door frames, others are downstairs in the kitchen. Voices are low, which only serves to make the clatter of Royal Copenhagen teacups placed on saucers seem deafening. Beigels – pronounced the British way in our family, ‘byegul’ – and onion platzels, heaped with smoked salmon and chopped egg, are stacked in pyramids on white porcelain platters, largely untouched. My surviving grandmother, Esther – almost blind, a ninety-year-old bubbe, our last direct link with the shtetl – is in a corner armchair, Clare’s two boys at her feet. They are nine and seven, and both look bewildered, lost in the undergrowth of grown-ups’ misery. Their dad, Charlie, will be landing soon at Heathrow. The bank is flying him home on Concorde.

We’ve gathered to remember Clare, and it would be hard to forget her in this room. Young Clare, student Clare, bride Clare, mother Clare. Framed photos on bookshelves, coffee tables, mantelpiece. Eight year-old Clare on a pony with a red rosette pinned on her vest. Clare in a mortarboard collecting her double first from Cambridge. Clare and Charlie in a vintage open-top Daimler on their wedding day. A diptych of Clare cradling each of her babies.

She was pronounced dead just after seven o’clock this morning. The surgeon said that her heart stopped during the operation. There was an implication that she would have been appallingly incapacitated if she had lived. Whether or not they said that to suggest death wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, that’s not how it feels.

I have spoken to the police and pieced together some of what happened. Around seven last night, a Polish builder named Henryk Deyna turned right in his white van on to the Embankment. Clare was in his blind spot. The first he knew about her was a thud against the side panel. A white van. Like the one that ran me off the road. Not pure coincidence. It is an acknowledged law that white-van drivers are unable to see cyclists.