I had not even, though I did not know it, reached the beginning.

It is a strange thing, to look back and see how confidently a person can misunderstand their own life, how sure I was, walking out of that small quiet funeral, that I understood the shape of what had happened to me.

A kind young woman had eased a lonely stranger’s final weeks; the stranger had died; that was the whole of it, a small sad complete thing.

I had the entire story backwards, and I did not have the faintest idea.