In the kitchen I unlocked the back door to let in some air. The reek of mould was stronger in here. The silence pressed on my ears and in an effort to dispel it I rattled around opening cupboards and moving jars. There was the tin tea caddy from our old house, with pictures of the Houses of Parliament rubbed away where his thumb and palm had grasped it so many times. Inside, I knew, was the teaspoon with an RAF crest on the handle.

I lifted the lid off the breadbin and recoiled from the source of the smell, a puffy canopy of blue mould. Caz and Mel and I remembered after the funeral to empty the fridge and leave it with the door propped open, but we forgot the bread. Choking a little, I rummaged for a cloth and a rubbish sack. I went to wipe out the mould and the obscene furry nugget of bread that lay in the heart of it, but there was no point. I dropped the whole thing, bread bin and all, into the sack and firmly tied the neck. I was here to go through Ted’s belongings. I didn’t want to keep many of his possessions – there were more than enough memories already.

Upstairs there was the silence, even thicker and heavier. Ted’s was a quiet road, and behind these closed windows nothing had moved for a month. I turned on the bedside radio but the sudden babble made me jump and I switched it off again.

The blue-tiled bathroom with worn blue candlewick mats was a comfortless narrow space that reminded me again of the dripping green box at our old house. Ted humming ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ as he shaved. Me perched on the edge of the bath watching him. Through adult eyes I could see myself, gazing, hungrily following his every move, trying by the sheer power of concentration to draw some attention to myself. It must have been infuriating for him.

There was a bottle on the wooden shelf over the basin. I reached for it, unscrewed the cap and automatically sniffed.

It was as if I had rubbed the green glass and whispered an incantation to bring the genie smoking out of its prison. The scent of his cologne rushed into my mouth and nose and eyes, and my obedient brain performed its trick of instant recall. The here and now dropped away, and Ted was standing beside me, in his prime.

He was wearing a dark blazer and a lightly checked shirt with a cravat, paisley-patterned. He was freshly shaven, with his skin taut and shiny where he had rubbed and patted it with the cologne. His thick hair was slicked back with some kind of brilliantine. I could see the tiny furrows left by the bristles of the old silver-backed hairbrush that he kept on the tallboy in his bedroom.

He winked at me. ‘All ready, eh?’