On the coach, the seat belt cuts across Lily’s bust, causing her brassiere to dig into her bony chest. Her feet don’t quite touch the floor. The seat next to her is empty, and she keeps glancing up the aisle to make sure the reverend doesn’t suddenly decide to sit with her and continue their conversation. She squirms in her seat trying to adjust her undergarments and then lurches forward as the coach brakes and swerves. Someone calls loudly down the bus, “Missed ’em!” There’s a smattering of laughter.

The buzz of the sherry in Lily’s blood makes her nauseous. She looks out of the window and watches the scrubby gray verge at the side of the motorway as it whizzes past them, her reflection merging with the panning background. It makes her head spin, and she feels like she’s melting into ash. She thinks about Edna all alone back at the cottage, and suddenly she wants to be home. Whatever was she thinking? What a fool she’s been! Edna was right.

Edna is always right.

Lily closes her eyes and then, before she knows it, they’re pulling up at the end of Oliver Road.

“I’ll walk you up,” Mrs. Thorogood offers.

“Really, there’s no need.”

Mrs. Thorogood doesn’t argue for long. “Well, if you’re sure.” She gives Lily a tight hug, which Lily finds a little overfamiliar, but then, that is what it’s like these days, isn’t it? All kissing both cheeks and public displays of affection. The reverend hangs back, thankfully.

“We must do something soon. Coffee or something?”

“Yes, that would be lovely,” says Lily, though she’s never liked the taste of coffee and the thought of it now makes her feel sick again.

Mrs. Thorogood gets back onto the coach to a stern word from her husband and Lily watches it pull away, listening to the pistons firing as it negotiates the bend past the Old Vicarage. She decides to cut across the churchyard, and as she turns to do so a chill breeze ripples along the hedgerow. The weather has turned. It is as though they left in summer and have returned in autumn. The wind whistles between the headstones, eddying small whirlwinds of leaves. It’s late, almost midnight, but she can still see well enough, the dark shadow of the church picked out against the industrial glow of the city in the distance. Lily’s eyes dart, as always, toward the grave where her parents are buried. Sometimes she sees her mother here, as she was when they came to visit Dad, moaning and weeping like the women you see on the news after an earthquake. Auntie Vi used to say Mam was very Mediterranean in her grief.

A sudden gust of wind tears open her cardigan, and one of the church bells tolls faintly, as though it’s a little embarrassed. The shadows slide and merge along the churchyard walls. Ahead of her and a little to the left there is a darker, thicker patch. Is there someone crouched there? She hears the echo of her footsteps and resists the urge to turn and look behind. She tries to shake off morbid thoughts. Daydreaming. Unproductive, her mother would call it. Self-indulgent, Edna would add.