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parents, who have their arms around each other. I don’t know what we should be doing, other than following the minister. I grip Mum’s arm, feeling strange, and wishing someone else was here with us. I especially wish Sameena were here, but she’s in Mumbai visiting her sister who is not well, and she’s not flying back till next week.
    Well, really, it’s Oli. I wish Oli were here, holding my hand. But of course he’s not, because I asked him not to come.
    The graveyard looms, our small family totters towards it, disjointed and odd, and behind us comes Louisa, the de facto leader of her branch of the family, clutching her brother Jeremy’s hand.
    ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’
    My mother sobs, loudly, a great shuddering cry. Archie hugs her closer. Jay is watching the hole in the ground, intently, as if it is moving. Arvind is gazing into space, he doesn’t look as if he’s here at all.
    They lower Granny’s coffin into the ground, and I look around again to see the congregation now assembled behind us, scattered in and around the lichen-covered gravestones on the edge of the moor. Suddenly I think of Cecily. Where’s her grave? I look around. Wouldn’t she have been buried here, too?
    Granny was from here. But we, my mother and uncle, my grandfather and my cousin, we are from many other places as well. With a sudden flash of pain in my heart I long to be back in London, walking through the cobbled streets round Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, feeling the centuries of history in the city under my feet.
    But now I’m away from it, now I see the emptiness of my life there, in a way I haven’t before. It is empty. A job I can’t do, a marriage I might lose, a life I don’t recognise. They are throwing more earth into the grave now, it patters softly on the wood, like rain. I feel my throat closing up.
    When the crowd starts to disperse, gathering outside the church, getting into cars that are clogging up the tiny lane, we are all left around the grave. No one speaks. I look at their faces: Mum’s is a mask, smiling and staring into space; Archie has sucked his lips in and is bouncing on his feet. Louisa sniffs, and puts her hand gently to her mouth. Behind her, the handsome Bowler Hat has bowed his head, his face serious. Next to him, Louisa’s brother Jeremy looks out of place. He is sleeker than them all, tanned, his hair is good, his clothes are pressed, his teeth are white. He is standing a little apart from his sister and cousins, holding Mary Beth’s hand. I look at them all, and then down at my grandfather. Arvind is staring into the grave, and his thin fingers are gripping the plastic arms of his wheelchair.
    Something strikes me then: it’s funny, but they look totally unconnected. There’s no likeness between them all, no sense that we are one big family gathered together for a funeral. My friend Cathy and her mother and sister are like peas in a pod. Whereas Mum, Jeremy, Louisa, the Bowler Hat – they might have just met, you’d never know they spent every summer down here, four and five weeks together at a time. I’ve seen photos – not many, I suppose because of Cecily they don’t keep many here at Summercove. But Mum has a couple in her room at the flat, her and Archie, posing on the terrace, Archie like a young film star, raising his eyebrows, my mother Miranda pouting beautifully, Louisa and Jeremy smiling, their arms crossed. And there’s one of Archie and the Bowler Hat, and Guy, gurning down on the beach. I suppose that was the summer the Bowler Hat and Guy came here for the first time. In Granny’s room, she had a picture of Louisa and Mum, demure in halter-neck swimming costumes, lying on the lawn together when they were about twelve or so.
    You’d never know it to look at them together now. They seem like strangers to each other.
    Arvind clears his throat and the spell, whatever it was, is broken. The sun has gone in and it is very cold. I sway on my feet,