He has a few words for me, the only thing he can give. He says: Be prepared for the worst, but always hope for the best. See you in court tomorrow. He leaves as the guards are herding us back to our cells. The hope that the court tomorrow will end my misery buoys my spirits. I whisper to one inmate what I have learned. Soon everybody has the same news about the court tomorrow.

I am relentless. I feel a new power, the power of telling the truth. I can be consistent; he cannot. Through questions, my story unfolds up to and including their attempts to ask me to plead guilty. No, no, they were simply asking me to tell the truth. The court is so silent that one can hear a pin drop. When I finish, there is applause, which is met with a stern rebuke from the court.

If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.

OK, we’ll tell her you dug the grave.’ It’s the truth – stretched, but still true. Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?

It would take a while for me to realise that each of my children had given me as much as they took. My memories of them, bittersweet and constant, were as powerful as a physical presence.