‘Vee? Is this – was Leonie my mother?’

Vee wants to think that Erica knows the answer. That she need do nothing more than provide the evidence.

An unexpected sound: Erica is crying. Vee cannot-cannot-cannot open her eyes. The pain in her head is too much, a domino-effect now of one thing burning out after another, burn-burn-burn. She lifts a hand, hoping – hoping what? That Erica might take it, or at least see it? But Erica is sobbing now, the sounds muffled in a way that suggests her face is in her hands. She won’t see anything that Vee is signalling.

So Vee summons her breath. ‘What do you think?’

Erica pauses, drags breath into herself. ‘Why does it matter what I think? She was or she wasn’t.’

‘She was and she wasn’t,’ Vee says. And now, even though there is no new memory, she is finally sure. Ursula did the mothering, but Leonie was the mother.

‘What do you mean? Vee? Veronica? Please!’ Her eyes will no longer open, but she can feel the closeness of Erica, can imagine her face, touching distance away, with pain and questions and mascara all smudged on her skin.

‘Yes,’ Veronica says. Some things can only be black and white.

She has never noticed how the catch of a crying breath and the sound of a camera shutter closing are almost the same, a rush and clutch of sound.

And then, there’s the darkroom-quiet.

Epilogue

Epilogue

5 February 2019

5 February 2019

‘WAS NORFOLK ALWAYS THIS FAR AWAY?’ Marcus asks as Erica parks the car near the entrance to the churchyard.

‘I know what you mean,’ Erica says, stretching back her shoulders and reaching over to tousle Tom’s hair, ‘do you remember when we used to listen to Radio 4 when we were driving?’

Marcus laughs, ‘Yes. And I think there was sometimes silence. Seems unlikely, though.’ He takes hold of her hand, kisses it. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, you know.’

‘Me neither,’ Erica says, though to say that the first three months of baby Leonie’s life have been hard work doesn’t even come close to describing it.

*