But it was a long time now since they’d had people over. Long before Gisele got ill. He’d tried to suggest it – even offered to cook, Lord help them – but she’d just patted his hand and said maybe later. That’s the thing about later, though. It never really comes, does it? Instead you always seem to skip right past it without noticing and then, before you know it, it’s not later – it’s too late.

Toast. Two slices with butter and jam.

Putting the bread in the toaster, Valentine put the butter dish on the table along with the strawberry jam. His GP had warned him about his cholesterol, but he wasn’t going to switch to that spreadable stuff.

‘Over my dead body,’ he’d told Dr McDermott at his last appointment.

‘And well that might be, if you don’t change your diet,’ Dr McDermott cautioned, giving Valentine a pamphlet about saturated fats and a list of foods to eat.

Nuts and seeds? What did he think he was? A bloody sparrow?

That reminded him, he needed to fill up the bird feeders. Reaching for the jotter pad that he kept on the side to make daily lists, Valentine turned the page to start a new one and wrote in his spidery handwriting:

Monday 10th February

1. Fill bird feeders

He’d shoved the pamphlet in a drawer, along with all the other stuff that he didn’t want to read. Endless circulars and flyers about getting his guttering cleaned and his drains rodded. Bills in brown envelopes with cellophane windows. They all went into the deep dresser drawers in the hallway. When they were filled up, he’d move on to the ones in the sideboard.

Before Gisele became poorly, he used to take pride in dealing with it all, opening the post every morning and filing everything neatly away. It was a husband’s job. Now he hid it all away out of sight – out of sight, out of mind. If only he could do that with all the regrets and the guilt and the memories that woke him in the middle of the night, his heart beating so hard he feared it was going to burst right out of his chest. With all the anger that still raged inside. Just shove it in the drawer and close it and that was it: all gone.

He turned on the radio.

Too much thinking never did anyone any good. He tuned it to the jazz channel and glanced at the library books on family history and military records on the side. He’d been doing his family tree for years but not getting very far. Gisele was forever teasing him. ‘Can’t you get a faster hobby?’ ‘It’s not a hobby,’ he’d grumble, ‘it’s genealogy.’ ‘Well, can’t you get a different -ology?’ she’d reply, like that advert on the telly.

The toast popped up.

Putting the slices on a plate, he went to sit down at the table. He poured his tea, added his milk, buttered his toast and smeared on the jam. He made sure to use a different knife for the butter – Gisele was very particular about that. A lump appeared in his throat and he swallowed it down with a mouthful of tea. He gazed out of the window. At the whole day stretching ahead of him.