I rode with my family in an open train carriage across the wide salmon river. It had been an eventful day:

• my middle sister had taken my little sister to the hospital for an operation that she claimed to have “enjoyed”;
• I’d been out playing in a silver taffeta full-length split skirt and stay-up stockings;
• Granny H had died – coincidentally just a day before Auntie S’s funeral.

Now we were on our way to a canyon into which my mother and little sister leapt – without first checking the water level.