‘Scatter me here.’

Sam says the words gently but, still, they slam ice into my chest. We’ve avoided the subject since that last doctor’s appointment. Truth be told, I’d pushed it to the dustiest corners of my mind.

‘Katie? Promise me?’

Heddlestone Quarry is beautiful. Of course Sam would want to rest here, in the cool shade of the hazel and alder trees, the peaceful murmurs of nature broken only by the rat-tat- tat of a woodpecker or the splash of a heron trying its luck in the teeming pond. It’s everything she lived for. Sixty-four-year-old Sam, with her wry smile and easy laugh – the cancer might have hollowed her face but it can’t touch her spirit.

She catches my eye and the ice melts, sending waves of silent tears through my body. Slowly, I nod.

‘Oh, darling. Come here.’ She folds me into a bony hug. ‘It’ll be alright.’

I shrug her off: ‘Of course it won’t! You’re going to … there’s no …’ I draw a jagged breath. ‘How do you stay so calm? Why don’t you ever cry, or shout, or scream?’

‘Katie,’ she elongates the ‘e’, as always when delivering a hard truth. ‘I think you’re shouting enough for the both of us…’

I blink, and the two of us burst out laughing. The other volunteers are casting furtive glances in our direction. Sam raises her eyebrows, gives them a finger-wiggle-wave, and I can’t help but let out another little guffaw.

‘Darling.’ She’s serious again. ‘I’ve had my time. And it was marvellous. Really. Watching you grow up. Watching this grow up…’ – she gestures across the quarry – ‘Do you remember how barren this all was when we first started with the rewilding, that rainy summer of 2029?’ She turns back to me, eyes shining. ‘But here we are, 2054, and it’s fabulous. Now it’s time to move on, that’s all.’ A beat, then she nods: ‘To the next big adventure.’

The pressure of words unspoken surges within me, and I know full well this isn’t about me but I can’t stop myself blurting: ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you!’

‘Darling, stop. Think of Elsie.’

Elsie. My eleven-year-old daughter. Who I’d just been whinging about – Sam offering that mixture of sympathy and solid advice I’ll so sorely miss.

Elsie is not talking to me. Apparently, her rotten, lousy father having an affair then running off to the other side of the country is my fault, I’m that dowdy and boring. Now he’s so busy bringing up another woman’s child he has no time for his own. Like this week. He was so sorry. It was a last-minute thing he couldn’t get out of – this impromptu Caribbean cruise with his girlfriend’s rich parents – I wouldn’t mind telling Elsie, would I? He had to run.

And so it was me who had to let our daughter know she’d packed in vain, that her week on the south coast, the beaches and ponies and ice creams – the being daddy’s little princess again – would not be happening.

The bastard.

So Sam did her thing and here we all are, three generations of Joneses on a rewilding holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. We’d earmarked this week for Sam-Katie time, but Sam doesn’t seem to mind it being Sam-Katie-Elsie time, so I better hadn’t, either.

And for as much as Elsie didn’t want to come, she’s enjoying herself now. Sam and I watch her and a couple of the other girls check for blight and record wildlife, giggling and whispering to one another through the trees.

‘Katie, I know you think this spat is the end of the world, but you know what I see? A child missing her father and a woman struggling to fill the gap. It’s like us, darling, all those years ago. We got through it. You and Elsie will, too.’

I wince. ‘I was such a bitch.’

Sam cackles then clocks my expression. ‘You had just lost your father.’ Dad. Knocked off his bike in one of those sudden torrential downpours of the mid-2020s. At least I’d had him until I was fifteen; Mum had been carried off in that first wave of COVID, back when I was nine.

‘And you’d just lost your husband.’ They’d only been married eighteen months. Her last relationship, as far as I’m aware.

Sam looks up, toward the glorious bursts of purple heather cascading down the old quarry wall. ‘He’d have loved this.’

I place a hand on her shoulder. ‘He would.’ And it was all thanks to her. She’d set up ‘Rewild Heddlestone’ in Dad’s memory. He’d been a nature-loving scientist researching carbon capture, and he’d been particularly excited about biochar – loved how simple the idea was, just mix organic charcoal in soil and boom: carbon superhero at work! So Sam put biochar at the heart of the project, brought his dream to life.

‘If he were here, he’d start geeking out about soil fertility and increased yields, improved water retention and reduced nutrient leaching…’

Sam chuckles. ‘And refractory stability and carbon sinks… Well, I think we proved his point. He’d have adored all this reclaimed nature.’

I nudge her. ‘You old eco warrior.’

‘Well, someone had to be. Back when I was Elsie’s age, we’d take bets on how many shopping trolleys were sticking out the river.’

That irrepressible twinkle. Then the gut-punch: Will we ever talk like this again? I inhale so sharply I can taste damp earth.

‘It was special. Setting all this up – together.’ This is hard, we’re not usually like this, splashing our emotions everywhere. ‘Made me proud. And you helped me so much, even when I was...’ My hands are clammy. ‘All these years, whenever I come here I feel him looking down on me, smiling. Thank you. And I’m sorry, I am so sorry…’

I’d been awful. All that rage about my parents, Sam caught it, every last bit – me screaming how she wasn’t my mother and playing up with the boys and the booze. But still, every time it came crashing down, she’d been there.

‘Oh darling, you were a teenager – and one in pain, at that.’ Sam pulls me to her. ‘I understood.’ Tension rushes away, and my eyes begin to smart. ‘And that week was special for me, too, you know. Of course because of your Dad, but also because of you. Outdoors, yanking out weeds, lugging rocks around. You were more at peace, finally. And you started letting me in.’

It’s true, I’d found myself softening, won over by the work, by the sense of community and purpose. Smushing the soil between my fingers steadied me. And I started to see Sam differently. She cared, and she was warm, and she was trying her darndest. That meant something.

‘You know, when we’d nearly done that first time, I stood here thinking about your Dad. And about me, and what I’d lost,’ her brow wrinkles, ‘And you, and what you’d lost. I had to step up, but I’d no idea how. I was terrified. And worried you’d hate me, for being here when your parents were gone.’ She clears her throat. ‘But then you came over and took my hand. And, somehow, I knew we’d be alright.’

‘Better than alright, Sam,’ I choke, ‘I’m so lucky I had you.’

She hugs me, tight.

‘Mum?’ – It’s Elsie. When did she come over? ‘You okay?’ Those eyes, so wide. She touches my arm. It’s like she’s pressing pause on the pain.

‘Yes, my lovely! Just this place. Makes me a tad sentimental.’

‘Alright…’ Elsie draws back, ‘Hope you feel better soon.’ She sidles off.

‘See, she does love you. It’s just your turn to be the embarrassing grown-up.’

And we’re laughing again. Then we pick up our tools and join the others.

The urn is so cold my hands are going numb. I mustn’t drop it. If only I’d worn gloves, but I worried about slippy fingers – Sam would’ve appreciated the irony. Elsie and I crunch through frosted leaves. A squirrel skitters up a tree, leaving us to our own company. We reach the edge of the quarry wall and Heddlestone opens up below us, wide and inviting. It’s stunning, as always, but today it’s a different beauty – November stark. Hard to believe it’s only been four months since we were last here. Sam had been so fit that week, so sparky, so alive.

It’s time. There was such a crowd at the funeral, the church warden had to flurry around setting up a sound system outside so everyone could at least hear. I’d no idea Sam had touched so many people. The village hall was rammed too, for the wake. Mrs Green had to nip out for more manor house cake and Yorkshire teabags. All those people. And all those condolences – heavy words, from their hearts to mine.

Pressure on my back. Elsie. Deep breath. I remove the lid and release Sam, back to the earth she loved so much. I will my mind to capture the moment, how it looks and smells and feels, but it’s blurred by tears, and confusion, and stinging loneliness, and my goodness it hurts.

Elsie takes my hand. Together, we watch Sam swirl away.