Sympathy is new to George and he doesn’t like it. He’s rarely felt sorry for other people before, except Ellen and those tissues in her apron. He felt sorry then. Maybe it was his fault he couldn’t get her pregnant. It had made him feel less of a man. He wishes now that he’d been able to tell her how much it had hurt him to see her tears, those chocolate wrappers. He’d never found the right moment, or the right words. George had sat in his shed instead and held the woodworking tools he had wanted to hand down to his son. He had put money into a wedding fund for a daughter he’d never have, so she could marry a man who would never be good enough for her. He’d carried on adding to the fund for years, even when it became obvious there would be no son, no daughter. No wedding. Like a table leg on his lathe, the disappointment shaved and moulded him, made him knobbly.

This sympathy for Betty is new, though, because he can do something about it. If he wants to. Does he, though? He has the bus now, and those paninis, and he can do his own washing. He doesn’t need Betty. There’s a bakery on Sydney Street that makes cupcakes as big as his fist.

George leaves the letter on the kitchen table for three days. It stares at him as he washes up. It gets covered with pickle from his sandwiches and a spilled slurp of tea blurs the confession.

On day four, he picks it up, folds it neatly and puts it into his pocket, clips on Poppy’s red lead, and they walk out into the lemon-yellow sunshine.

The flowers he has picked from his garden (and other gardens in the village) are wilting slightly by the time he marches up the path, noticing the lack of weeding and the overgrown grass. Betty has let herself go.

He rings the bell twice. It takes a while for Betty to appear behind the frosted pane and, when the door finally opens, she’s dressed all in black. She even has a small veil covering one eye.

‘Are you going to a funeral?’ George asks.

‘No. I’m in penance.’ Betty looks older, and sadder.

‘Stupid cow. Come on, get the unlucky bastard.’

‘I’ve told you not to call my dog that.’

‘It suits him. Black doesn’t suit you. You look like Bertie Bassett.’

Lucky and Poppy sniff, reacquainting themselves with one another.

Betty and George watch them for a while and then she notices the flowers. ‘Merlin’s beard. Are those for me?’

‘No. We’re off to the graveyard. We have some ghosts to lay to rest.’ He offers an arm and she takes it.