They been driving for around 40 minutes now, the rain steady, visibility poor. The ritual was beginning to become meaningless anyway, but Terry still did wanted to do it. She paused, hoping the rain would ease off momentarily, and then opened the car door. She stepped into the chill Spring air, head down, arms folded against the wet, and ran in through the church gates and into the cover of the big russet-coloured porch. The sandstone looked so soft you could rub it away to dust in no time.

Sam would wait in the car, and try to amuse the children, already fractious from the tedium of driving in the wet. Terry would sit in the porch and... what? What would she do this year, 9 years after?

Before, on finer days, she had walked in the churchyard and looked over to the hospice grounds. She had thought, she had prayed, she had said things that needed to be said. But this year, what was there to say? The hospice was just a building now, nothing of mum there. Nothing of mum in the churchyard, either, she'd been scattered at the crem.

She was just gone. Not even really a space where she used to be. Most of the people in Terry's life now never even knew her, and, shockingly to Terry, she found that was beginning to matter less. She'd promised. She made a promise to remember, and now, as she sat feeling the wind tugging at the hood of her coat, she realized that she'd meant something different.

Remembering isn't hard. Remembering is just what you do. Terry knew that she'd actually meant that she wouldn't stop feeling, and she also knew it was an impossible promise to keep. Feelings are not subject to promises. It still bothered her, though - she felt unfaithful, cruel. There was something else, too, something that made her feel even worse.

She was clinging on, trying to conjure up the same raw bereavement because she wanted to be felt too. She wanted to leave a hole.