‘Right.’ I was thinking of the way he had necked all those pills on his one trip to see me in London. ‘Did she think he was unhappy?’

‘He was looking anxious,’ she said.

‘He always looked anxious.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘What about his girlfriend? Which one’s she?’

‘Her over there. The redhead.’

I looked. A woman of about forty was sitting with another woman her age, and two teenage boys arguing over an iPad. She didn’t look devastated, but most people don’t look devastated at funerals. We’ve spent a long time hardening our faces for these occasions.

‘Poor woman,’ said Amy.

*

Mum had mentioned her when I last saw her. ‘Carl’s got a new girlfriend,’ she’d said. ‘Two grown boys of her own. Do you think they’ll want one together?’

I don’t know what I said in reply but I suspect it was petulant. Mum was always bringing up the subject of children with us. She wanted the impetus to retire, to do so selflessly, so she could take long trips to London to see us and help us look after her grandchildren. She had discovered a love for London in her last years. As Amy got into her swing of renovating flats there were often places for her to stay for free on her half-term holidays, free if you count the implied painting-and-decorating labour that is the only real way to spend any time with Amy when she is the middle of one of these frenzies. It was a stressful, exhausting, lucrative hobby they did together.

I’d provide the cultural tourism side of Mum’s holiday, taking her sightseeing while Amy was at work.

‘It must be great having all this on your doorstep,’ she said, the last time I saw her, as we were coming out of a gallery.

‘You forget it’s there. Forget to enjoy what the tourists come here for. I used to get dragged to all the exhibitions when Monica was here. She’d get us in everywhere for free.’

‘I don’t mind paying for you, Paul.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean that. I love being a tourist with you.’

And I did. I liked standing with her there in front of the Thames, with new places I could take her to in all directions, an update on our old routine. When I visited her at home in the summer we would walk along the beach to watch the sunset go down, standing at the limit of things, the tide out and the sun aflame in the little puddles left in the sand. You could trick yourself there that endings were beautiful and reversible.

‘How is Monica?’ she asked. ‘Do you ever hear from her?’

‘Oh. She’s – did you not read about it in the papers? She was the first person ever to give birth in an Uber cab.’

‘What?’