Jetlagged from yesterday’s flight from Houston, Beth stood outside the hotel. The funeral service that afternoon would be sparsely attended – Beth’s sister, full of grief and anger, and a few care home staff. Mum had outlived her friends. The vicar had sounded relieved when Beth said she’d give the eulogy. He didn’t know Mum and was a busy man. But the words hadn’t come yet, only emptiness inside her.

Go for a walk, love, Mum’s voice whispered. It’ll do you good.

How the city had changed! This busy street of offices, hotels and apartment blocks between shopping centre and railway station used to be weed-choked empty lots. In her teenage years, she’d laughed at the idea that this raw town would ever have a business district. She’d longed to leave Milton Keynes. Astrophysics was her passion: stars, galaxies, black holes. Cambridge, Munich, and then the dream job at NASA.

Why did I only visit once a year?

Commuters walked purposefully in and out of the railway station. A man lay huddled in a sleeping bag by one of the coffee shops. Others stood nearby, sharing a can of cider. She turned left onto a redway that wound its way through a housing estate. Litter was scattered everywhere. People on bikes and scooters shot past in both directions. Dog walkers tugged leads. Who had she met on those long walks decades ago? Almost no one.

It must have been difficult for her newlywed mother coming to Milton Keynes: growing up on a farm in Wales, her ambition to teach in a rural school. She told Beth how, when she was a girl, her father let her milk the cows – wrapping her hand around two teats, holding them between thumb and first finger to trap the sweet-smelling milk, then squeezing down. She’d open her fingers to allow the teats to fill again and repeat the squeezing motion until the udder was empty. But her husband was an ambitious engineer and, lured by Development Corporation television adverts, they made the move.

The farmer’s daughter was depressed at first. Then Beth came, followed by her sister, and she made friendships. One spring day, near Stacey Bushes, when Beth was little, they came across a field of six cows and calves made of concrete and fibreglass. ‘I want to milk the cows!’ Beth squealed. ‘I want to milk the cows!’ Mum recounted that story over the years, always with a big smile. Perhaps the city’s green spaces helped Mum to adjust.

Beth’s sister never forgave her for moving away. When Mum’s Alzheimer’s worsened, she wanted Beth to move back so that they could share the burden between them. Instead, Beth paid the care home fees.

Last week, her sister phoned: ‘Mum’s gone missing. Just walked out of the place.’ Beth had known instantly where Mum was. And the police found her there, lying dead on the grass beside the concrete cows.

Beth approached the cows, tears in her eyes, knowing what she’d say that afternoon.