‘So something’s got to give at some point. It’s probably nothing major.’

‘I suppose.’

Marcus takes breakfast dishes from the table and starts to load them into the dishwasher. Erica would have rinsed them first. She doesn’t say so.

It seems to Erica, more and more, that while for her, little Tom has made her think of all the places life is vulnerable, all the ways she is dying, Marc seems to have taken fatherhood and used it to make himself taller, straighter, more sure of himself.

He looks up, smiles. ‘If you go now, you’ll catch the 9.15.’

29 March 2018

29 March 2018

THERE ISN’T A HEADACHE TODAY. Not much of one, anyway. The medication that Vee is on isn’t pleasant, but the reflexology she had yesterday brought her some rest. She is looking forward to Erica’s arrival. She’s been through all of the photographs now, everything either passed onto Erica, filed with her agency, or thrown away. Everything except the most private photographs, anyway. There are two boxes of documents but she can’t face them: small type, faded printing, make her worry that she will use up her eyes, somehow.

So she goes to her bookshelves. She’ll divide the contents into piles for the charity shop, Erica, and – well, maybe the university where she used to teach might want some of her books.

When she takes Fear of Flying from the shelf she feels instantly vertiginous. She would have put her reaction down to the power of suggestion, had she not loved every single plane journey that she ever took, nose to glass like a child. So that can’t be why Jong’s novel is making her queasy. Strange. She can’t remember whether she ever read it. On the inside front cover, in Leonie’s neat, sloping hand, is written ‘To V, from L, with love’. Leonie gave her so many books. Leonie gave her so much. She thought she was grateful at the time, but she is so much more grateful now that she looks back on her life and sees Leonie so large in it. Oh, everything is sad.

And then Erica knocks.

She is so nearly the image of Leonie. Remembering hurts, but it’s different to the griping, unsettled ache of the medication. This is a blazing pain, as though Leonie had died yesterday, as though Vee had been the one who killed her. She hears herself inhale, the noise a warm rush in her head, and then she opens the door.

Erica looks up, waves her phone: ‘I’ve been re-reading my aunt’s “Dear John” columns,’ she says.

Vee smiles. ‘Come in. What do you think of them?’

Erica walks through to the living room, puts a folder on the table, and turns to look at Vee. Her face says she’s filtering through words, finding the best one. Vee always liked this, about academics. ‘She’s quite – brutal.’