The children and I stop at the church to visit my little boy, who died when he was just five weeks old. My surviving son is his twin, and we have regular conversations about why this happened, how far in the ground his brother is buried, whether he is allowed Haribo in heaven (I vote yes), and why some poorly people live and some die. That one's a tricky one to answer. We went through a phase when J would ask anyone who so much as sneezed whether they were about to shuffle off their mortal coil, but I think he now accepts that most of us tend to get better.
We walk up the cobbled path to the churchyard entrance, and as always I am overwhelmed with nostalgia for this beautiful church. I went to school here, running through the churchyard to the tiny village school at the rear, my satchel banging against my legs in time with the chiming church bell. Twenty years later I was married in the church, picking my satin-heeled way across the cobbles on my darling father's arm to marry a man who would later give me my beautiful children. And three years ago we stood before the same vicar, bearing our son in a tiny white coffin.
