If I squint into the morning mist, I can almost see Bella, the day she told me she didn’t want to be a photographer anymore, that she was going to do a teaching course instead. Did I ever question her about it? It was such an odd and abrupt change—she’d wanted to be a photographer since she was twelve.

“It’s something I’ve been asking myself recently.” I cringe inside as I remember the time Rebecca Martin had annoyed me so much that I scrawled a D across her Shakespeare essay when it was worth at least a B, if not an A. “I don’t think I’m a very good teacher. I think I’d make a better landscape gardener. That’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid.”

He smiles again. “You know that’s what I do, right? Gardening? I work in the gardens of a National Trust house across the river in Gloucestershire.”

“Really?”

“And Jack went into construction. With Max as an architect, we could build ourselves a whole town.”

The front door opens as we approach the house and Dad and Julia step out together. It makes my chest hurt to see the effort Julia has made—she’s dressed, hair brushed and soft around her face, radiant smile at the ready for her son. I step away from Sean.

“You go on,” I say. “I’ll give you some time with your mum. But, Sean?”

He glances back at me.

“Don’t…don’t upset her, okay?”

He gives me a look I can’t interpret and I have an urge to grab him and pull him away, but it’s too late, Julia is there, touching his arm, touching his cheek, tears in her eyes as he bends to murmur something in her ear.

I turn away.

It’s much later in the afternoon when I open the front door and hear raised voices coming from the kitchen. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I mutter, clenching my fists. I’ll bloody kill Sean if he’s come in and upset Dad or Julia.

The kitchen door opens and Sean comes storming out, slamming it behind him. He’s scowling but stops short when he sees me in the doorway.

“What have you done?” I say. “What have you said to Julia? She’s dying—you can’t bring all your baggage into my house and upset her in her last days. You—”

“Oh right, of course you’d assume that, wouldn’t you? Mum’s gone up for a rest, actually, before you get on your high horse. And it wasn’t me shouting, it was Max and Lena.”

“What?” I glance toward the stairs and Julia’s closed door. “Come outside a minute.

“Why were Max and Lena shouting at you?” I continue when we’re far enough away from the house not to disturb Julia’s rest.