Salma's father died in the spring. By the summer people had stopped asking.

At three months she thought she was doing well. She was back at work. She cooked. She laughed at something on a Thursday and did not feel guilty about it until later that night.

At five months she stood in a supermarket aisle holding a box of the biscuits he liked and could not move for a full minute.

She went home and decided she had gone backwards, that the five months had been an act, and that she was worse than she had been in March.

She had not gone backwards. Nothing about that minute in the aisle was a relapse. Lesson two is the shape she was actually in.