It was ten past ten in the morning.

Her son had telephoned her in distress at twenty past nine.

She lived nineteen minutes away.

And she arrived in a good wool coat with the pearls she wore to weddings and to her husband’s memorial service, with her hair done, carrying a brown A4 envelope under her arm like a woman delivering a report.

She had not come to a hospital to see her grandchildren.

She had come to a meeting.