Her mother had been keen on genealogy and Hazel had inherited all her papers. Her sister Karen didn’t see a lot of point in looking backwards. Too much retrospection could get you down, she said. She only wanted to look ahead. After their mother died, it had been Hazel who had sorted through everything, with Owen as her helper. That had been eight years before. The task of clearing the house had fallen to her, Karen having been too busy with her shop to stay on after the funeral and help. In any case, she hadn’t wanted anything from the house, not even photographs. Owen had been fantastic. There was so much stuff: ancient Christmas cards and receipts, stacks of magazines, every single one of the three children’s school reports.

There had been suitcases full of old clothes, blankets, linens. One had contained her deceased brother’s clothes. There was something terrible about the fact that the things Stephen had worn so long ago were now back in fashion. The young were all for 1970s style now: the flared jeans, the cheesecloth shirts, the tank tops. A vintage store would’ve given good money for these old clothes, but Hazel knew she could not allow his T-shirts and jeans and the rest of his clobber to go out into the world and have a life without him. She’d either have to keep them, as her mother had, or destroy them. Her mother had not been able to take the latter course, and neither could she. But Owen, Lord rest him, had taken care of it. He’d quietly put the things back into the case and taken it out to the car. The next time she went to put some groceries in the boot, it had been empty. She never asked him what he’d done with the case and he never told her.