“I’m not going back to teaching. I actually lost my job…no, don’t, it’s fine,” I add when I see Dad react to my words. And actually, it is fine. I feel lighter again as I say the words, like they held weight. “I’ve already decided. I’m going to apply for a landscape gardening course. I’m going to stay here and commute.” I lean over and pull out a weed that’s choking a budding rosebush. “This garden can be my homework. We can work on it together like we used to when Mum and Bella were alive. Yes, time will pass. Yes, the seasons will keep turning, but we’ll get through it together, as long as it takes.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to…”

“I won’t be giving up anything,” I say. “I’ll be gaining something. I’ll be finding my life. We could make it beautiful again,” I say. “The two of us working together—me teaching you which are flowers and which are weeds.”

“Are you sure, Tess?” he asks. “Sure you want to give up your life to come back here? I’ve always understood why you’ve stayed away.”

I pull up a few dandelions. “I’ve been running from it for ten years,” I say. “It’s no wonder I can’t remember what happened—I’ve been running from everything that reminds me of that summer, living a life that isn’t mine, that I never wanted.” I pause and sink down to sit on the damp grass. “If I’d stayed, if things had been how they should have been and Bella was still alive, I’d have stayed home and gone to the local college, taken the landscape gardening courses I wanted to take. Bella would have done her teaching course—she’d be the one living in the city. I’d be here or close by, maybe with my own business. That was what I always wanted. Like I said before, Dad, I’m not giving anything up by staying. I’m getting my life back on the track it was meant to be on the whole time.”

The vicar clears his throat. “I believe Jack will now come up and speak about Julia.”

We look at Jack, sitting farther along the front row. He gets up and goes to the front, standing behind the lectern. He stares straight ahead, then glances at me and smiles. I shiver and have to resist the urge to jump up and stop him from speaking. Wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity to get a final revenge on his mother for leaving him? To devastate us all as a final punishment with twisted lies and accusations?