Thirteen years of me letting it go.

Thirteen years of that’s just her being her and a hand on the back of a neck, and me saying nothing on a landing or in a car on the way home, and a thing being smoothed over on the morning of a Christmas or a christening or an operation.

What all that smoothing taught my husband was that his mother was weather.

Not a person making choices, with a history of them, who could be held to account by anybody for anything — just something that came over the house from time to time, and the correct response to which was to stand still and let it pass.