Something’s changed. I sense it at once, as soon as you appear. You step with care up the worn stone steps from the vaporetto and emerge on the edge of the Piazza, your leather travel bag in hand. You are always beautiful, my love, but today your eyes are preoccupied, thoughtful, and I watch you from a distance, wondering why.

We meet often here in Venice, always at this time of year. In April, the city is still lazy with pleasure, relieved to have emerged once more from the chill and fog of winter but not yet hardened by the summer heat and the invading tourists.

It is still early in the day and the air blowing into Piazza San Marco from the Lagoon is fresh and salty. Waiters, crisp and self-important in formal dress, set out tables and metal chairs along its fringes. Shopkeepers clatter open their shutters. Street cleaners in green municipal coats sweep and sluice.

You walk slowly, your loose coat billowing, and send up swirling, wheeling arcs of pigeons. You are dwarfed by the great Basilica with its round arches and vast domes. Its gold façade glints in weak sunlight. You pass the foot of the red-brick Campanile, which shoots an eternal arrow to Heaven.

A waiter pulls a chair for you as you approach the café and his smile as you settle is part-chivalrous, part-flirtatious. You sit, your face lifted to the sun, looking back across the vast grandeur of the Piazza. You seem a little lost. Your eyes stray to the waterfront where you’ve just disembarked and your expression is wistful.

You’re waiting for someone, my love. I know you too well. Your thoughts are divided between me and this unknown someone, and at once I am both hopeful and afraid for you, as only a mother can be.

The waiter brings you a glass of ice-cold orange juice, freshly squeezed, and a brioche. You love them. You always did. No coffee though. That surprises me. You seldom start with the day without it.

You are more radiant today, my love, than I think I have ever seen you. Your skin glows. You are young and happy and very lovely. The waiter sees it too. He hovers, lingers too long when he returns to remove the empty plate, smiles as he asks if there’s anything else you’d like.

When he leaves, you put on your sunglasses and tilt back your head, basking in the early sunshine. Waiting.

I am only here because you are thinking of me, of that strange, intense time we shared in Venice, all those years ago when you were a little girl. This place is special to you because you know you always find me here and now, I sense, you’ve brought someone else to share it.

I wait quietly with you, watching, grateful to be here again, to be with you.

I miss you. Sometimes it seems as if that is all I am now. An emotion. A depth of love for you that even death can’t destroy. If I exist at all, it’s only in these moments. Moments when you think of me. When you stop and pause in the midst of all your busyness, your helter-skelter of a life, and remember me and at once, here I am, right here, with you. Do you feel me now?

Richard gave you my jewellery when he cleared the house and for a long time, when you were a teenager and brim-full of feeling, you wore it and I was glad to be so often with you.

No one else can ever be your mother. Not even death can take that from me. And although no one else could ever replace Catherine, Ella loved you. She cared for you as if you really were her own. I’m grateful to her and to Richard too. The three of you learned to be happy and found joy in each other as a family, despite all the suffering that went before. Perhaps Angela was right. Perhaps you were always in God’s hands. Perhaps He is taking care of you. Perhaps His universe is, after all, unfolding as it should. I still don’t know.

And there he is. A man strides quickly across the Piazza, sending up clouds of scattered pigeons, hurrying as if he’s late. A young man, perhaps three or four years older than you. He wears his hair long and his shirt and trousers need pressing but as he hurries across the stone flags towards you – as he catches sight of you there, languishing in the sun with your eyes closed – he smiles to himself and his eyes are so full of love that I forgive him the crumpled clothes and decide yes, this is a kind man, a good man and clearly he is in love with you, as any sensible young man should be.

He creeps round the table and approaches you stealthily from behind, cups his hands over your sunglasses and when you jump, he says: ‘Guess who?’

And you laugh and say: ‘The waiter?’

‘What waiter?’

‘The handsome one who’s been keeping me company all this time. Where were you? I’ve almost finished.’

He pulls out a chair and sits beside you, leaning in to make his excuses, to kiss you and in the kiss everything is forgotten, everything is forgiven. I am still here with you, my love, but at a distance now. Which is exactly how it is supposed to be.

Later, when he finishes his coffee, he pulls back your chair and helps you to your feet with such care, such tenderness that my heart sings.

And then I see. Finally, I understand why you’re so very lovely today. The soft swell is barely visible under your loose clothes but, as you walk, you touch a protective hand to your stomach and although it lasts only a moment, it’s a gesture I recognise at once, from the time long ago that I was carrying you and so full of happiness I could barely contain it.

And that’s when I realise that I have nothing to fear. I will not be erased by this man and your love for him. I will be remembered all over again, in your future child and your love for her and in the overwhelming joy she brings you, as powerful as the joy you gave me.

And you’ll understand, finally, why I jumped without hesitation into the river that day and why, my love, you would too, to save your own daughter’s life.

I don’t know what happened to me when you were pulled alive from the river and I was not. I don’t know what it meant. The flight into the light. The sense of peace and of finding my father.

I know what many people would say. And perhaps they’re right. Perhaps it is just chemical. The fantasy of a desperate, fading mind as it fights to hold on to life. Perhaps I have now come to dust and exist nowhere but here, in your memory.

But today, as I follow the two of you across the Piazza and into the cool of the Basilica, into the gentle hush of this ancient, echoing building undulating with arches and domes, the sculptures and mosaics crafted by fingers that long ago ceased to move, where so many have worshipped who no longer have tongues to pray, I look into the dance of light across the stone flags and see the shadows shift and, just for a moment, I feel that all too familiar hope that something of us all is truly eternal, and that one day, when your time does come, you will fly, twisting and weightless, through a great swirling funnel of light and I will be waiting for you, my love, my own sweet child, my eyes radiant and my arms stretched wide in welcome.