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‘Oh, here you all are. I wondered where you'd got to. There's a terrific band playing in the marquee and Alice says we must all come and dance. You're missing all the fun.’ As her eyes swept round the room, over our faces, her expression changed. It occurred to me she'd missed Caro slapping Felicity, because she'd been dealing with the pigs. She knew none of this.

‘What's going on?’

I saw real panic pass through Felicity's eyes. She glanced fearfully at Caro. Felicity valued Mum's high opinion very much. Her best friend. A woman of integrity. A woman whose moral rectitude could not be questioned.

Caro got off the bed.

‘Nothing,’ she said shortly, smoothing her skirt down. ‘I just felt a bit peculiar and came up for a lie-down. Then Tim came in bellyaching about his hip, and the next thing I knew, the whole bloody family was in here.’

Three people flashed her grateful looks. It seemed to encourage her, spur her on. She dug deep and found more. ‘Now come on,’ she said briskly, finding her shoes under the bed and shoving her feet in them. She threw on her jacket, looking much more like her old self, ‘we've got tea and cake to serve yet. And what a relief we have got cake, thanks to you, Barbara, and no thanks at all to Leonard.’

‘Yes, although thanks to Leonard,’ said Mum following her out, ‘all your sows have now been serviced.’

Caro stopped in her tracks in the doorway. ‘All of them?’ She turned aghast.

‘Yes, why?’

‘I was going to separate them. Let him have two at a time.’

‘Ah, I wondered. That's what I used to do. But Henry said no, Mum wants them all done at once.’

‘Did he, by jingo? Which means in six months' time six sows will produce up to fifteen piglets apiece, which means…’ she paused to do the maths, ‘ninety piglets. Oh, splendid.’ She looked a bit faint. Then something in her face lightened. She threw up her arms. ‘So what? What the hell do I care? It certainly won't be me sloshing the swill in the trough, will it?’

And flashing us all a final defiant glance, she marched off down the corridor.

33

Bella Edgeworth died in March. The funeral was held in the tiny village church next door to her house in Yorkshire, and the Hamilton family were amongst the mourners. Initially I'd hesitated, wondering if perhaps just Ant and Anna would be more appropriate, but Stacey rang and said please all come, so we did.

There were so many cars outside the church that day we had to park right at the far end of the village and walk. As we made our way, the three of us, on that breezy spring morning, a mixture of flashing bright sunshine and hurrying clouds, the bells tolling slowly and relentlessly, getting ever louder as we approached, it turned into one of the longest walks I'd ever taken. We arrived in silence, along with other equally hushed little groups of dark-suited people. My throat was so constricted I could barely breathe. Stacey, however, at the church door with Ted beside her, greeting everyone, was having none of that. She was wearing a floaty white skirt and a pink camisole and cardigan, and her blonde hair fell in a shining sheet around her shoulders. It occurred to me she looked like an angel. On receiving our hugs and whispered condolences, our voices catching, she thanked us, but we were told firmly as she handed us the order of service: ‘This is a celebration of her life. Mum and I had a lot of time to plan this, and it's what we both wanted. I'm fine.’

I suspected she wasn't, but she was doing a good job of hiding it. And if we could help by belting out ‘All things bright and beautiful’ and not, I noticed, ‘The Lord's my shepherd’, then we jolly well would. The tiny church was heaving; people were standing outside in the churchyard too, and we fairly raised the rafters. Then we listened as two of Bella's best friends read: first from Genesis Chapter One – Bella's choice; nothing tear-jerking about being in the next room waiting, just a factual account of how God made the world in seven days – and then her favourite Shakespeare sonnet, the one about the darling buds of