Iris arrived first. I knew her well by now. She had visited regularly since our stay with her, leaving Findlay at home to feed hay to their ancient rescued horses and ponies. She had helped me cut the burned bits off my first roast dinner, joking and being kind all the while. Now she appeared with baskets of food, everything she could manage, her face graven with new and deeper lines, and as she bent her back to put the baskets on the floor and bowed her headscarved head, she could have been from any age. Women had been doing this forever, bringing sustenance to babyless mothers, and I was one in millions and millions.

James wanted to dismantle the cot and put away the pram and the clothes for me but Iris said, No, Yvette and I will do it. She knew I had to.

Everybody went to church in those days, and word spread fast among the kindliest and most generous. Soon it seemed the whole parish knew about us. People dropped in all the time. Those who might have brought rattles or teddies for the new baby brought flowers. All I had to do was sit and be given flowers. Elderly ladies came to visit, women I knew by sight when I saw them at the church on weekday afternoons in the shadows of the back pews, praying or just sitting, with shopping bags at their feet. They gazed speakingly into my eyes, not bothering with introducing themselves. I wished they would stay when the younger married women visited. I wished there were a wall of old women to protect me from those mothers of huge families.

Célia flew from Adelaide. My parents from Alexandria. I told them not to, but they insisted. They arrived together, my mother between my father and Célia, her arms hooked in theirs, looking tiny, caked in a terrible tan foundation and cherry lipstick, wearing a suit the same pink as a sugar mouse. “Grief has done something awful to her dress sense,” I said to Célia.

Célia couldn’t help a shaken laugh. “My God,” she said, “I don’t know how you’re not in pieces.”

“Because you’re here,” I said. “That’s why.” And she put her arm around me, and I realized she thought I was gaining strength from her presence whereas the opposite was true. I was only remotely coherent because they were with me, and therefore I was forced to be.

James came in with apples from the tree. Big, so big and red and swollen, so many apples the tree had, it was laden, they were crammed on every drooping branch, the lucky damned tree. I saw it every day from the bedroom window, I wanted to chop it down. Célia said, “Ah, no, James,” laying her hand gently on his arm. “She won’t want them.”

So he took them away.

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