Mention of food makes Honor aware that she has not eaten since the spag bol with Alex yesterday evening and now it is nearly lunchtime. It’s easy to forget about such things when you’re on your own. When Nevis was still very young and the pain of losing Zoe was still as raw as a beating, she would sometimes go for days without food. She would feed Nevis always, spoon the pulpy mess into her mouth, watch the little smile of pleasure come to her smooth, blameless face but she would not give that to herself. She had thought that those days and months and weeks and years of punishment she took at her own hands had come and gone, that she had dealt with them and moved on, but perhaps not.

‘Just the coffee,’ she says. ‘I’m meeting my daughter here, but I’m early.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ the young woman says sweetly, adding, ‘You go and sit down and I’ll bring it over.’

Moving to the corner table she takes off her coat and hangs it on the back of the chair wondering why she said such a thing. What does the woman at the counter care? Sometimes, she thinks, I don’t think I’ve quite mastered being on my own. But there will be time. A lot of time.

She sits and waits and tries not to fidget. There are some leaflets and freesheets strewn about but she doesn’t feel like reading them. A few moments later the server brings over the coffee.

‘Like your fleece,’ the young woman says. ‘Purple’s a good mum colour.’

Honor hadn’t wanted to be a mum. She hadn’t not wanted it either. At nineteen she hadn’t given it much thought. In the weeks after Nevis was born, while Zoe was still alive, and they were living in the caravan, she’d done what people now call co-parenting. The caravan was so tiny that there hadn’t been much choice in the matter, but she’d actively wanted to be involved. Nappy changing, feeding, bathing, getting up in the night and soothing of tears and screams, all this she had done, none of it the same as if she had been Nevis’s mother. The buck still stopped at Zoe. Until Zoe was no more. And when that happened, motherhood had been thrust upon her in a way it never would have been had Nevis been her biological child.