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Violet was waiting when I got home from Bob’s. It was maybe four in the morning and I let myself in and didn’t make too much noise on the stairs and even my breathing sounded too loud and I locked my bedroom door behind me and got her out from under the bed. Her urn was so beautiful. The grain in the wood was intricate and clear, the polish was smooth and flawless in my hands. Did my dad think the same thing when he chose it? Or did he pick the cheapest thing in the brochure and never noticed how it shone?

I sat with her on the floor while the birds woke up and the sky turned a watery grey and people got in their cars and tried to start them.

Violet had spent five years in that urn for a reason. I’d started off wondering why she picked me to help her, what she wanted. I’d thought about her funeral, her will, about finding her the right resting place. I’d thought she wanted to me to solve something for her. I didn’t know she was doing something for me. I hadn’t expected for a minute that she was going to lead me to my dad.

I was sorry that she’d decided to have enough of living.

I hugged her in her exquisite, cold, wooden container and I wished that I’d been able to know her when she was still alive.

We flung her ashes in the Thames. I remembered what she said on the tape, that when she was homesick she imagined the water flowing all the way back home, and I thought she could go home that way if she wanted, or really anywhere if she didn’t. The wind threw most of her back in our faces, me and Martha and Bob. We got a cab to Westminster Bridge, behind a car full of builders. All their hard hats were on the back shelf and they looked like eggs nestled there, jostling together over the speed bumps.

On the way home I felt sad and tired and empty, like she’d only just died. The urn was so different without her in it.

I hope she ended up where she wanted. I hope she found what she came back for.

I hope I was some help, walking into that cab office out of my mind.

And I suppose that’s why I had to tell somebody, why I had to write things down.

I wanted to add to what she’d left behind – a handful of movies, a portrait, a contact sheet and a tape.

Violet changed my life and I wanted to stop hers from turning to nothing.