Pete went to the inquest. I did not. He came home and told me the two sentences I asked for, which were that it had been quick and that Silas had not been at fault.
And then the envelope went in the drawer.
For two years and two months, that envelope sat eleven feet from the sofa I cried on most evenings, and neither of us opened it, and neither of us ever said out loud that we were not opening it.
I opened it on the Friday, at about half four in the afternoon, with Immy at school and Pete at work, sitting on the floor of my own front room.
What was in it.
The collision happened at 17:40 on the nineteenth of December, 2022, on the Ferndown road about four miles outside Cardew.
Two vehicles. Silas’s, northbound. And a blue hatchback southbound, which crossed the centre line on a long right-hand bend.
