She always thought that I’d go first. We both did. All her friends are widows and some of them had a new lease of life after their loss. I’m not saying she was looking forward to her widowhood, but she was pragmatic about it. She liked to make the best of things.

The husbands went in various different ways in their own time: heart attack, cancer, mobility scooter accident. Stan broke his hip on a golf course after Christmas. He’d tripped over the rake in the bunker, stayed there overnight and got hypothermia while his wife, Betty, thought he was in bed with her all the time. She’d been at watercolour classes, painting flowers. She’d undressed in the bathroom, tiptoed into bed, woke up the next morning, made him a cup of tea and saw he wasn’t there, after all. Surprise of her life, she said, to see his side of the bed empty.

Enid thought it was the way he’d have wanted to go, on a golf course. She was wrong about that. I know Stan. Stan wouldn’t have chosen to die in a bunker, out of all the ways to go.

On a green, maybe. Stan was competitive.

But if he’d broken his hip on a green somebody would have seen him and there wouldn’t have been a rake to trip over in the first place.

Betty had a shock when she read through his will, because he wanted his ashes scattered in the Himalayas. But by the time she read it, he’d been buried in East Finchley Cemetery.

It was a bit of a puzzler why he wanted to be scattered in the Himalayas. Betty couldn’t fathom it. He didn’t like heights or travelling. I think it was Stan’s way of having an adventure to look forward to.

Enid thought he’d wanted to spite Betty, because even if Betty had read the will earlier, she’d have had all the worry of getting him there. Enid had a cynical view of people. She was always alert to people’s motives.

In a marriage, it rubs off.

Stan was happily married to Betty, though.

Perhaps I could be happily married to her, too.

There’s a thud then a rattle from somewhere in the house.

‘Nearly done,’ the lad tells me as they push Enid through the hall.

There we are, then. I sigh.

Since Enid died, I’ve sighed a lot. I’ve caught myself doing it.

The boss comes back for a last word to tell me that Enid will be available for viewing twenty-four seven until the funeral.

‘Viewing?’ I say. I don’t want to view her. After she passed I couldn’t even recognise her. Her face had relaxed and smoothed out, and she didn’t look herself at all. I tried to find some features I was familiar with, but even her nose looked different.