‘I knew you’d come back,’ he said again, practising the words, the first he’d uttered for six months. The doctor called it selective mutism, but Bill – had he spoken – would’ve disagreed. It was simpler than that. He just never heard anything that justified the effort of a response. All his life, he’d enjoyed silence, and the less you said, the less you had to listen to. By now, it no longer felt natural to speak, but it felt very natural to sit beside Alison like this. He’d forgotten a lot of the detail of his life, but he remembered as if it were yesterday the first time she’d visited his loft and the first time she’d handled one of his birds without panicking, and, always, that respectful way of listening to him talk about the pigeons, with no mockery in her eyes, only concentration. A kind, quiet, genuine girl. He’d been waiting for her to come back for donkey’s years.

‘Like one of your homing pigeons,’ she said. ‘Like Clover.’

His failing eyes brimmed with ready tears, and she said, ‘Oh, Mr Lawrence, forgive me, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ but he shook his head, and although he didn’t manage to frame the words, she understood from his expression that he wasn’t sad, he was only overcome. Alison talked to him then, in her new voice. She told him every single detail she remembered about his pigeon loft, everything she’d loved about those brave, clever, dignified birds, and all the things he’d taught her about them. She named them, counting them off on her fingers, and she talked about Clover flying home six hundred miles from Lerwick, about Violet and Vincent, his breeding pair of Flash Pied Emperors, and what made them champions, how he’d known from the light in their eyes and the slope of their shoulders that they were going to be winners. Mr Lawrence tilted his head upwards, closed his eyes, and listened to her in a kind of bliss, the way some people lose themselves in music, or others lift their faces to the warm, repetitive balm of tropical rain.

When Marion came in with tea in her best china mugs, she was stilled and silenced by what she saw. She placed the tea on the nearest surface and walked soundlessly from the room. Outside, on the landing, she allowed herself the release of what she called a good cry, but she did so only for a short while, and very quietly, so as not to disturb the tryst, then she took off her shoes and trod lightly downstairs in her stockinged feet, pausing between steps like she used to do when her children were fractious babies, and mustn’t be disturbed from their daytime naps.

‘What’ve you told Alex?’ Marion asked Dan.

‘An edited version of the truth,’ he said. ‘Katelin’d already involved him anyway, months ago, when I first told her about Alison.’

She shook her head in a weary, defeated way that irritated him.