‘Oh I hear ya, sister,’ I say softly to the little girl. I giggle as I take off my daysack and open up the top, diving into a pouch I put in there for the darker, more difficult moments ahead. I’ve called this my energy-giving stash, which is mostly a bunch of Cadbury’s chocolate eclairs. My thought was that if it all got a bit too much then a good suck on a toffee filled with chocolate goo would make everything better again. I take out a couple and hand one each to the girl and the little boy who has leapt to her side now he knows I’m going to deliver. They inspect them, twirling them in their hands and watching as the sun bounces off the golden goodness.

Just as I’m about to hand some through the fence to the three waiting boys, all of whom are now enthusiastically up on their feet, I spot the girl pop her sweet into her mouth while it still has its wrapper on.

‘Oh noooooo …’ I say, holding out one of the toffees in my hands and showing her that the foil might be inviting but it’s definitely what’s underneath that counts. ‘Like this,’ I say, popping it into my own mouth and grinning back at her.

The boys copy me straight away, needing no encouragement; she, however, watches me with such an adorable look on her face, like she’s enchanted by the action of me eating sweets. She’s like a little Disney character with her big brown eyes and two messy braids hanging over her shoulders.

‘Mmmm …’ I sound, gesturing for her to do the same with her own. I’m surprised she hasn’t scoffed it yet, but maybe they’re used to getting wine gums or jellybabies – sweets that actually look like sweets.

She does as I have done and her eyes widen as the sweetness hits.

‘Just you wait, it’s going to get a whole lot better than this,’ I say, even though I know she doesn’t understand me. ‘Just keep sucking.’

She giggles in response and I feel a swell of warmth.

I’ve always been one to see children in my future, but the practicalities of that, the realization that most people my age were already jumping on that train while I was still single, meant that it was somewhere I never really let my mind go to. The idea of having kids has lingered on the horizon, especially since meeting Liam, yet I’ve never really let it come into focus. Recently I’ve pushed it even further away. With everything going on, with losing Pia, it’s felt like one hope too many. One beauty of life I’ve really not dared to dream about.

But human connection … isn’t it something we all deserve? Isn’t it something to be celebrated, not feared just in case the unthinkable happens?