I got on a plane to my mother’s hospital and my husband was eleven rows in front of me with my best friend. There was a note of hers in my handbag that she’d written on my fridge that morning.

I think both of those women existed in that hot tub at the same time, and I think the one in the green coat in 2B did not cancel the other one out, and that is the part I cannot do anything with.

PART 5 — THE BARBECUE

The ninth of June 2024, at ours, about twenty-five people. Corin’s thing, the one we do every June.

Dev came over to me by the side gate with his phone.

“Fran. Can I show you something.”

And I was in the middle of it with twenty-five people and a tray in my hands and somebody’s child was crying about a wasp.

And I said: “What is it, love?”

And he said: “It’s — look. You need to see this.”

And he turned the phone round.

And I took it off him.

I did not look at the screen. That is the part I have had to say out loud about nine times now, including to Dev.