I walked away from the funeral up through the private part of the cemetery. It had been allowed to run wild. Angels and open bibles were girdled with ivy. The undergrowth was alive. The squirrels that hopped across the tombs and the blackbird singing in the tree were uninterested in mortality. For them worm, nut and sunrise were enough.

‘Beloved wife of John.’ ‘Only daughter of Andrew and Kate.’ ‘Here lies one who loved not wisely but too well.’ Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Beneath the holly trees two men were digging a grave with rhythmic determination. One touched his cap as I passed and I felt a fraud for taking sympathy not mine to have. In the dying day the ring of the spade and the low voices of the men were cheerful to me. They would be going home for tea and a wash. Absurd that the round of life should be so reassuring even here.

I looked at my watch. Locking up time soon. I should go, not out of fear but out of respect. The sun setting behind the rows of birch long-shadowed the path. The unyielding flatstones caught the light, it gilded the deep lettering, burst along the trumpets of the angels. The ground was alive with light. Not the yellow ochre of spring but heavy autumn carmine. The blood season. Already they were shooting in the wood.

I hurried my steps. Perversely, I wanted to stay. What do the dead do at night? Do they come forth grinning at the wind whistling through their ribs. What do they care that it is cold? I blew on my hands and reached the gate as the night security guard was clanking the heavy chain and padlock. Was he locking me out or locking them in? He winked conspiratorially and patted his crotch where hung an eighteen-inch length of flashlight. ‘Nothin’ escapes me,’ he said.

I ran over the road to the café, a fancy place on the European model but with higher prices and shorter opening hours. I used to meet you here before you left Elgin. We used to come here together after sex. You were always hungry after we had made love. You said it was me you wanted to eat so it was decent of you to settle for a toasted sandwich. Sorry, Croque Monsieur, according to the menu.

I had scrupulously avoided our old haunts – that’s the advice in the grief books – until today. Until today I had hoped to find you or more modestly to find out how you are. I never thought to be Cassandra plagued by dreams. I am plagued. The worm of doubt has long since found a home in my intestines. I no longer know what to trust or what is right. I get a macabre comfort from my worm. The worms that will eat you are first eating me. You won’t feel the blunt head burrowing into your collapsing tissue. You won’t know the blind persistence that mocks sinew, muscle, cartilage, until it finds bone. Until the bone itself gives way. A dog in the street could gnaw on me, so little of substance have I become.