Page 15 of Annabel and Her Sisters

The following Sunday, Ralph, the vicar at the church I go to, asked if I’d possibly mind doing the flowers with Enid on Friday because Mary had had a fall.

Nothing serious, but she wasn’t up to it this week.

I’ve noticed, incidentally, that if you fall before you’re seventy, you fall: if you fall after, you’ve had a fall.

Ralph was the very dashing new vicar at our church and we’ve all seen Fleabag , but this one’s better.

Taller. Bigger smile. Luckily he was happily married with two children, so was safe from the panting female parishioners who flocked to hang on his every word– our congregation had swelled from twenty to seventy-five in six months.

And when I say swelled I mean heaving bosoms, hormones, heavy breathing during prayers, you name it, he got it. I was no exception.

‘Of course,’ I beamed, looking into his greeny blue eyes and admiring the shock of dark hair just attractively greying at the temples, and wondering, as we all did, what on earth had lured him to a life of the cloth, away from the comfortable world of insurance broking?

There were many theories. Mary declared he’d seen a vision at an underwriter’s box and mistaken an ancient City buffer for John the Baptist. Hailey said his wife had lost a baby in childbirth and he’d had an epiphany on account of the grief.

I was more inclined to believe this account.

I did know that it was when you really couldn’t sink any lower that you either turned to drink and recreational drugs, or got a bit holy.

In my case it had been the latter, when David died.

On the other hand, a friend who’d been widowed at exactly the same time as me– and unlike me had been a regular church goer– said that she absolutely lost her faith. Each to their own.

Anyway, now and again I liked to make contact with the Big Man Upstairs and see how my deceased was doing, not that David had been a believer at all, but he was undoubtedly a very good man, so I knew where he’d be.

‘I have to warn you, I’m a bit of a plonker,’ I told Ralph.

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean I just shove them in the vase any old how. Not much finesse.’

‘Oh! Couldn’t matter less. Enid’s so blind she bungs in ground elder and nettles sometimes. A feather went in the other day, so anything goes. By the way, is Luke OK?’

‘Luke?’ I found myself totally wrong-footed. ‘My son? Yes, why?’

‘He hasn’t been for a while.’

My jaw slowly lowered. I stared at Ralph. ‘Luke doesn’t come to church.’

‘Oh, he does. Most Sundays. Evensong. Haven’t seen him for a while, that’s all. Anyway, thanks for helping out. I’ll tell Enid.’

I walked home, digesting this. It was extraordinary news.

And rather lovely. Except… Luke lived in Hackney.

But only for the past year or so– perhaps he’d started going before that?

Or… did he go before supper, on Sunday, which, along with Polly and Max, he often hoovered up at my place?

But why had he never mentioned it? But then, religion was so personal, wasn’t it?

Certainly to me. Not to everyone, I knew.

Some people liked the coffee and the chat in the chapel room afterwards. I couldn’t wait to get away.

Polly was upstairs sculpting when I got back and I asked her. She didn’t like being disturbed and I totally got it; was irritated myself if anyone popped in to ask me something when I was scribbling, as if it wasn’t a proper job, but this was irresistible.

‘Oh yes, I know. He’s been going for a while. Not mornings like you, though.’

‘Golly. Why didn’t he tell me?’

She went back to the shoulders of the nude clay torso she was carving, carefully scraping at the collar bone with a tiny tool. She shrugged. ‘Well, he didn’t tell me, either. I have a mate who goes occasionally. Harry, he was in the choir at school. He still sings. He told me.’

‘And have you asked him?’

‘No, why would I? It’s his business, surely?’

My children were very close, so I was surprised. But then not so. Surely this closeness had led to Polly’s rather marvellous discretion.

I went downstairs, even more thoughtful. Perhaps it was after David died? I made myself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, listening to the builders two floors up. Polly had put her earpieces back in with her music so was oblivious to them.

I’d been with David when he’d died in Fleet Street, just as my mother had been with my father, seconds after Clarissa had shrieked to her as they pulled into the yard in the horse lorry, outside the kitchen window.

My mother had been splendid, naturally. No medical training whatsoever, but she’d run out still with tea towel in hand, jumped into the lorry, and recognized the symptoms of a stroke immediately.

The things we now see on the telly, but not in those days.

The paralysed face, half collapsing. The lack of coherent speech.

The arm hanging loose. She’d called an ambulance immediately as Clarissa wept, hopelessly for once, and who can blame her.

When he lost consciousness as they waited, Mum had given CPR: she realized he wasn’t breathing.

The stroke had been massive and gone to his vital organs.

One in particular. My father died of a heart attack in the ambulance, but everyone said, as the paramedics took over from Mum pumping his chest in the yard, where she’d got him on to his back, on the cobbles, on her own, Clarissa still sobbing, that he’d been given the best possible chance.

That she’d done everything right, everything that they would have done, everything she possibly could.

I, on the other hand, had panicked. David and I had just had lunch in Rules in Maiden Lane, his favourite restaurant– it was our wedding anniversary.

We were walking back to the Temple where I’d left my car.

I’d had a drink, just the one, and he hadn’t, because he was due back in court.

And actually, he’d have preferred supper, so he could have a drink, but knew he’d be working in chambers long into the night on this particular case, so I’d persuaded him to nip out for lunch.

What if I hadn’t? What if he’d stayed in chambers, had a sandwich at his desk?

And what if, when he’d collapsed in the street, after staggering a bit, and clutching his arm, I hadn’t been so useless?

What if I’d had some charge on my phone when I tried, with shaking hands, to ring 999?

When I say Fleet Street, we were just off it, in an alleyway, leading down to the quad and the Temple Church.

No one was about. It’s a little known passageway used only by barristers, and historically journalists, but they’d all decamped to Wapping by then, the Wig and Pen, where the two professions would meet and swap stories over a jar, long gone.

So the alley was empty. But what if I’d been able to find my voice, cry for help?

What if I’d turned David on to his back, or sat him against a building, all the things I now know you do when people have a heart attack.

What if I’d run in the other direction, up to Fleet Street, not down to the Temple, to the empty quad, everyone back at work, and where I’d found only an Italian lady, a tourist, who was as panicky as me, didn’t speak English.

And she didn’t have a phone that responded to 999– we tried.

Eventually a couple of young lawyers arrived as I finally found my voice and screamed– ‘Help!’ They came at a run, gowns flying, holding on to their wigs.

They rang an ambulance immediately, did all the things– loosened his tie, sat him up a bit kneeling behind him– that I’d failed to do, but by then, precious minutes had been lost. When the ambulance eventually arrived, the paramedic stressed to the driver, en route to hospital, siren blaring, that time was of the essence.

His voice was urgent and his next words stayed with me.

‘If only you’d called us sooner,’ he said, as he leaned over David attaching the pads of the defibrillator, gave him an electric shock.

Heartless, perhaps, but he said it. ‘I couldn’t,’ I’d whispered. ‘My phone…’

The children were always chiding me for never having any charge on my phone. But I hated the sudden march of modern technology, all relatively new back then, and maybe secretly saw my dislike as an expression of artistic temperament. So delightfully creative, so out of touch with the modern world.

‘Why didn’t you use Dad’s?’ Luke had asked. I remember staring at him in the hospital corridor as we waited for news. Polly appeared, sending the double doors at the far end flying, running towards us, fresh from Central St Martin’s where she was studying.

‘It simply didn’t occur to me,’ I’d whispered, horrified.

He’d looked shocked. But said nothing. Neither of them did, ever, apart from absolutely lovely things. ‘ So not your fault, Mum. Incredibly natural to panic in those sort of situations.’

But I was, you see. A panicker. No one wants to be that. Particularly when it might have prevented the person you love best in the world from dying. I knew I could have saved him. Two people had told me. The paramedic, and Luke. Indirectly.

I actually didn’t know what to do with myself after that.

The grief was colossal, crushing and petrifying, in the true sense of the word.

I turned to stone. Couldn’t move for days.

Sat rooted to a kitchen chair. I simply couldn’t believe it.

Couldn’t believe he’d gone. It was the ‘goneness’ as I called it, in my head.

The absolute never again-ness. That beloved face.

Never again would I see it. But the guilt .

The guilt consumed me. Oh, dear God. It was that which saved me.