Thinking it would be unwise and way too obvious to start packing a suitcase, Edith gradually squirrelled away most of her belongings in the little car that Charles had helped her buy when they were working together. Her mother didn’t even know she owned a car; if she had known, she would have forced Edith to sell it, so Edith had kept it permanently at the hospital. Charles had taught her to drive in the grounds of the nursing home. She remembered how thrilling it had been sitting so close to him that their thighs rubbed together, his hand over hers, calmly guiding as she changed gears. As part of her plan to forge a new identity, that little car which she had become fond of would have to go too, something she had explained to Charles and he had agreed to, reassuring Edith that once she was firmly established in Altrincham he would buy her a smarter model that better suited a woman in her new position.

With the boot of her car full of her possessions, Edith was poised for flight at any time. Fortunately, since her arrival at the Home, she had hardly used her car at all, so there was still petrol in the tank; plus ever-practical Edith had carefully studied the route to Cheshire on a map she had bought in Kendal, along with another map showing the footpaths along the Manchester Ship Canal. The Home would have to report her sudden disappearance to the local constabulary, who just might trace her and then (God forbid) she would be hauled back into a life she detested. No. If she were to become Emily Edgecombe, Edith Mann would have to die. Of course, in order to pull off her plan she had been obliged to speak to Charles of her ‘suicide plan’, which he, clever chap that he was, had helped her to contrive. Ironically, Edith thought with some satisfaction, they would very soon both be living double lives, he behind his invalid wife’s back, she behind a new identity.

The plan was that in some secluded spot close to the ship canal, with no nosy parkers watching, Edith would unload the contents of her car into Charles’s Daimler and, sometime after he had driven away, she would abandon her car along with some identity papers, her ration book and a suicide note. After sloping away from the scene on foot, Edith would take a bus to join Charles in their love nest. For sure nobody would weep a tear for the loss of Edith Mann; her mother might snivel into the dregs of her last gin bottle; but apart from that who would even notice or care about her passing? Which suited Edith down to the ground. Like an actor in the wings, she held her breath, awaiting her cue from Charles and the paradise that would follow.