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.

All of which is true and none of which is why I did it.

I did it because saying it would have cost me, and because staying quiet was free, and because I had decided somewhere around the second Christmas that I could live in that family as long as I did not look directly at it.

That is what I was doing on the floor of that funeral parlour. Paying the bill.

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PART 4 — THE JANUARY

Tobias knew he was going to die.

Not the day. He had a cardiomyopathy diagnosed in the summer of 2021 and he told his consultant, his solicitor and nobody else.

He did not tell me. I have had eleven months to be angry about that and I am about two thirds of the way through it.

In the January, eleven weeks before, he went into an office in town and did four things.

He put the estate into a trust for our child with a professional trustee, so that no adult in his family could ever be in a room where money and that baby were discussed at the same time.