Dev’s failing eyes read the news on his phone. ‘I was painting blue irises in my garden this morning.’ And immediately he was there again, in the sunshine garden, watching her as she painted, her blue eyes fixed on the flowers, her back curved, her shape taut.

He blinked away the memory and focussed on the screen again. ‘I was planting blue irises in my garden this morning.’

It was not her, of course it was not. It was her daughter’s daughter in her red sweatshirt. It was the past now again in his present. As she had always been. And now, now, she was planting the bulbs for the future, the future he had hoped they would see.