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.

I stood in my own doorway with twelve days of no sleep in me and I said:

“Which grandchild?”

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PART 2 — POSY

Arthur has a daughter.

Her name is Posy. She is nine. She lives in Ardenmoor with her mother Nuala, forty minutes away.

She was born in the January of 2016 and Eleanor Vessing has never met her.

In the autumn of 2015 Nuala was twenty-three and working in the office at the family firm, and Arthur was twenty-eight, and Eleanor did what Eleanor does.

There was a sum of money and there was an agreement and Nuala left that job in the November and the family closed round it like water.

By 2017 there was a version in which Nuala had made it all up. I have heard Eleanor say, at her own table, that there had never been any child.

There is a child. She is nine, she does gymnastics, and she has Arthur’s chin.