Margaret stood over her daughter and had about two seconds of ordinary, annihilating grief — the makeup was wrong, they had done something to her eyebrows, her hands were arranged in a way she never held them — and then she made herself stop being a mother.

She has described that transition as the hardest single thing she has ever done, and she has been present at the deaths of two thousand people.

She looked at the collar.

It was lace over a lined bodice, high, buttoned at the back, sitting above the jawline on both sides — not a neckline that ended at the throat, but one that covered it entirely, from the collarbone to just under the ear.

Margaret reached out and drew the left side of it down about two inches.

Somebody in the second row made a sound.