‘I’m sorry?’ He looks up at her, surprised, and Vee almost smiles. It’s as though the existence of her father in the world was the last thing that tethered her to tolerance. Since Stanley’s instantly fatal heart attack three months ago, she’s challenged everyone who’s made assumptions, from her aunts who lamented her single status at the funeral, to the bank manager who had asked if she would need anything explained to her when she had gone in to close his accounts. (‘Would you ask a man that?’ she’d asked, and when he’d apologised she’d turned away and started reading. She was too deep in sadness, in trying to balance on a world without ballast, to bother to listen.)

‘I don’t think it’s your business what I do next,’ she says. ‘And I suspect that if I was a son, not a daughter, you wouldn’t have felt the need to check.’ Is she a daughter, though, now that she has no parents at all? She doesn’t dare wonder. She’s on a narrow track, one foot in front of the other, not looking left or right, not daring even a full, deep breath or a glance towards the sky. Grief must be accepted. This is the knowledge that shaped hers and Stanley’s lives.

‘I apologise.’ She can see he’s panicking at the thought of calling her Ms. It’s amazing how many men can’t – won’t – get it, saying ‘Muzzzz’ in an exaggerated way, as though the word is a joke. This prick tries to sidestep it altogether. ‘Veronica. If we can do anything else for you, please let me know.’

‘I’ll be using my London solicitors in future,’ Vee replies. Fen’s niece, newly qualified, is setting up a practice out of her mother’s spare room and the sisters are bringing her their wills, powers of attorney, divorces, house purchases, and anything they can to help their sister out. ‘And it’s Ms Moon.’

5 September 1984

5 September 1984

‘VERONICA. EARLY AS EVER.’ Ursula, who opens the door to Vee in leggings and a sweater with a stain down the front, has mascara smudged under one eye. She wears an expression that reads ‘I could really do without this’. She looks like a woman who has fought five battles this morning, and won three.

Vee thinks about her own morning: a shower, coffee, putting on a white shirt, a grey V-neck, black jeans, DMs. All without the radio, or music, because she likes quiet in the mornings, and all achieved in a relaxed half an hour. Ursula must have children by now; she was never the kind of woman who would do anything else. Each to their own.

‘Come through.’