I went into labour at my husband’s funeral and my mother-in-law told me to call a taxi. Twelve days later the two of them were at my door asking for their grandchild.

She did not kneel down.

She pulled the fabric out of my hand as though I had put something on it. And then she reached down and took Tobias’s ring out of my fist, and she had to open my fingers to do it.

And she said, to a room with about sixty people in it:

“Give me that. It’s a family ring — you’ve been in this family two years. Get up, you’re ruining his funeral.”

Nobody said one word.

Sixty people. Two of his cousins. A man who had worked with Tobias since 2014. My own colleague from the practice, four rows back, who has since told me she froze and who I have forgiven.

And then Arthur came up the side and got both hands into my shoulders.

“You’re not ruining his send-off.”

He took me the length of that aisle on my feet and not on my feet, past sixty people, and put me out through the oak doors into the rain.