The next morning I pop around to Arnold’s and knock on the conservatory door. He has morning coffee in here at ten-ish, and every so often I come around to join him. I’ll be honest, the cafetière coffee is a big draw, but it’s more than that. Arnold is lovely. He’s like the granddad I never had. Not that I didn’t have a granddad, but you know, Grandpa Wade hardly counts.

Arnold’s already there, a full cafetière ready and waiting. It’s sitting on his latest book, and I shudder as I step inside and spot the large brown ring spreading across the cover. I move it and spin the novel around: it’s Dorothy L Sayer’s Whose Body?, one of my grandma’s favourites. Arnold seems to be on a detective novel thing of late. Discovering his love of reading has been one of my favourite surprises of my time in Hamleigh.

‘How’s your mother doing?’ Arnold asks as I pour myself a coffee.

I give him an approving nod, and he sighs between his teeth.

‘Would you stop acting like you taught me how to have a conversation? I wasn’t that bad before you got here. I know how to be polite.’

Whatever. Arnold insists that his decision to ‘clean up’ (buy some new shirts, go to the barber’s) and ‘get out more’ (start Pilates, go to the pub on a Friday) was his and his alone, but I know the truth. I’m his Donkey, he’s my Shrek.

‘Mum’s good, actually,’ I say, passing him his mug. ‘Or, you know – a lot nearer to good than she has been for a while.’

Since that phone call after the argument, Mum and I have met up three times: once for tea, twice for lunch. It feels strange and tentative, as though we’re rebuilding something wobbly and precarious. We talk about Carla in fits and starts, both afraid to go too close. It makes me anxious to the point where I’m sweating with it. I feel like I’m in danger of opening something I’ve fought very hard to keep closed. I want to do it, though, for Mum. I may not have really known what I meant when I promised Grandma I’d be here for my mother, but I get it now. Mum doesn’t need errands doing, she just needs family.

I think part of what had made me so angry with my mum was the fact that I felt she should have been looking after me, not the other way around. But Mum couldn’t be my shoulder to cry on, not when she was bent double with grief herself. That’s the messy thing about family tragedy, I guess. Your best support network goes under in an instant.

I’m explaining all this to Arnold when I see his mouth twitch.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Oh, nothing,’ he says innocently, reaching for a biscuit.

‘Go on.’ My eyes narrow.

‘Just seems to me that helping your mum has really got you talking about Carla at last. Which is what your mum wanted. Wasn’t it?’

‘What?’ I lean back and then I laugh, surprising myself. ‘Oh, God. You think she’s doing all this talking about Carla for me Nothing to do with helping her?’

‘I’m sure you are helping her, too,’ Arnold says, through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘But you’d be a fool to think she’s not getting her own way, that Marian.’

Here I am, making Mum my latest project, and there she is, making me the exact same thing.

‘Maybe fixing one another is the Cotton family’s love language,’ Arnold says.

I stare at him, my mouth hanging open. He grins toothily at me.

‘Borrowed a book about relationships off of Kathleen,’ he says.

‘Arnold! Are you thinking about trying to meet somebody?’ I ask, leaning across the table.

‘Maybe I already have,’ he says, waggling his eyebrows. But, infuriatingly, no amount of bullying, cajoling or wheedling will get any more information out of him, so I have to give up for the time being. I take the last shortbread as punishment for his discretion, and he shouts such a florid string of old Yorkshire insults after me that I laugh so hard I nearly choke on it on my way out.

*

Mum texts me later to invite me around the next day. It’s the first time she’s suggested I come to her house, and I feel tenser than ever as I make my way over there, my fists clenching and unclenching beneath the sleeves of my hoodie.

As soon as she opens the door, I know she’s pushed things too far this time.

‘No, no no no,’ Mum says, grabbing me as I try to bolt. ‘Just come in, Leena.’

‘I don’t want to.’

The door to the living room is open. The room is exactly like it was when Carla died – all that’s missing is that bed. There’s even that chair where I used to sit, holding her hand in mine, and I can almost see the bed, the ghost of it, invisible blankets and invisible sheets—

‘I’m trying something new,’ Mum says. ‘This podcast I’ve been listening to, by that professor – she says looking at photographs is a wonderful way to help you process memories, and I thought – I wanted to go through some photos with you. In here.’

Mum takes my hand and squeezes. I notice she has one of those old photo envelopes from Boots in her other hand, and I flinch as she pulls me in to stand on the doormat.

‘Just try coming in, love.’

‘I can hardly bear to look at that photo,’ I say, pointing to the one on the hall table. ‘I really don’t think I can do a whole stack.’

‘We’ll just ease into it slowly,’ Mum says. ‘One step at a time.’ She turns and cocks her head, staring at the photo of Carla on prom day as if she’s seeing it for the first time. ‘That photo,’ she says.

She walks over to the hall table, picking up the frame, then looks up at me.

‘Shall we bin it?’

‘What? No!’ I say, eyes widening, and I walk towards her to grab the picture.

Mum doesn’t let go of the frame. ‘Carla would loathe it. It’s been there so long I’ve stopped seeing it – I’m not sure I even like it very much. Do you like it?’

I hesitate, then I let go of the picture. ‘Well, no. I kind of hate it, actually.’

Mum links arms with me and marches me down the hall. As we move across the living-room threshold my eyes skit over the space where the bed would be, and my stomach drops with the same sensation you get when you go flying over a bridge in a fast car.

‘It should go. It’s a terrible photo. It’s not Carla,’ Mum says.

She drops it into the bin in the corner of the living room.

‘There. There. Oh, that felt a bit strange,’ she says, suddenly pressing a hand to her stomach. I wonder if her emotions tend to boil there, too, like mine do. ‘Was that awful of me?’

‘No,’ I say, staring down into the bin. ‘The photo was awful. You were just … impulsive. It was good. Mum-ish.’

‘Mum-ish?’

‘Yeah. Mum-ish. Like when you suddenly got cross with the green wallpaper one day and we got back from school to find you’d peeled it all off.’

Mum laughs. ‘Well. In case you didn’t notice … you’re in the living room.’ She tightens her grip on my arm. ‘No, don’t go running off. Here. Come and sit down on the sofa.’

It’s not as bad as I thought, actually, being in the room. It’s not like I forgot what this place looked like. It’s seared on my memory, right down to the old stain in the corner by the bookcase and that dark splodge where Grandma fell asleep and let a candle burn down on the coffee table.