And my mother, who was not at that dinner and who I have not mentioned once.
She was at the wedding. She bought a coat in the January and she cried in the register office at Vaudry and there are photographs of her holding my arm on the steps.
And I rang her on the twelfth of October, the morning after, and told her the whole of it in about six minutes.
And she was quiet and then she said: “When did you find out, love?”
And I said the February.
And there was a pause on that telephone of about four seconds, and then she said: “Right,” and asked whether I had eaten.
She has never raised it again. Not once in fourteen months.
She has been at my flat twice a week since the baby. She does the washing. She has never said one word about the fourteenth of February, 2025, and I know exactly why, which is that she has decided that saying it would cost her a daughter and a grandson and she is seventy-one.
