George,

I’m sure you’ll be feeling angry now. No doubt taking it out on anyone within ten feet of you. If I know you, and I do know you, George, you’ll be stomping round the village being a grumpy bugger.

Don’t. Please. I know you can’t handle grief, but don’t take it out on people who are only trying to help you. Show them there is more to you than swearing and foot-stamping.

I’m not asking you to skip around the village doffing your hat and helping old ladies into church on Sundays. I’m just asking you to accept that I’m gone. No amount of raging or using your beloved C-word can change that. The awful poem that Barbara will want to read at my funeral claims ‘death is nothing at all’ but we both know that’s a lie. I have not just slipped away to the next room, and life will not still mean all that it ever meant. There is no absolute unbroken continuity, but if you are out eating Scotch eggs, you are still going somehow. You’ve not starved and you’re taking your medication. Take your anger too, and bury it. Walk it off, hammer it away. Break cricket bats if you must, but let it out, and let me go. You are still alive, George, for the rest of your life. I know you have a beautiful soul under all that pomp and bluster, but others might not be so generous. Don’t burn all your bridges.

Be nice to Lucy (the girl who handed you this letter) and don’t short-change her. She’s lovely.

I love you,

your Ellen

PS How was the Scotch egg?

How did Ellen know? Did she take the bereavement course Betty always bangs on about?

‘Grief is a journey and I’ve ridden that son of a jackal to the end. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.’ Betty had counted them on her fingers, rattled them off, like she was giving him directions.

The Scotch eggs twist in his guts and his head pounds. He wants to rest it on the table and sleep. Wants to wake up at home in his chair with his dog and the sound of cricket. Suddenly he can’t remember how he got here, and shame stains his face, like a slap, like a damp patch on his crotch.

He folds the letter, exactly as it was, puts it into his pocket and goes to pay the bill. He’s not been charged for the tea, and Till-girl, Lucy, tries to press a brown bag into his hands, but he pushes it away and leaves the shop before the first tear he’s cried in over sixty years falls.