Reaching out to open the door now, Malcolm wondered how much of this Tommy remembered. The room looked even more of a mess than he’d feared. It had been a long time since they’d given up thinking Tommy might come back to see them, and of course they’d never had children of their own. They’d kept the single bed, mainly because it had seemed too much bother to get rid of, but it hadn’t been made up for years, and now the mattress was hidden under stacks of books and old magazines. Boxes covered the floor, packed with things they didn’t want but had never got round to throwing out: a broken radio he had once thought he might fix, the Dairy Diaries Heather’s sister used to send her each Christmas that Heather kept afterwards for the recipes (which she never used), an old train set from Malcolm’s childhood that he felt oddly sentimental about, travel brochures that Heather had held on to because she said she liked to look at the pictures. All the detritus that came from living so long in one place.

There were a few boxes of Heather’s things too: her clothes and some of her jewellery that Malcolm had kept, plus an unfinished bottle of scent; he still crept in here from time to time to hold this bottle guiltily to his nose, overwhelmed by the sense of his wife’s simultaneous presence and absence. He could never have thrown it all away, but he had felt more recently that it was strange to keep everything in its usual place in their bedroom, her dresses and shoes still in the wardrobe, her hairspray and moisturizing cream on the dresser. Perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t “healthy”, that word people seemed so keen to use these days. That had been the view of Fiona McKenzie, at any rate—a kind woman, but someone who always thought she knew best. Packing it up into the spare room had seemed like a good compromise.

The whole room smelled musty and airless—old, Malcolm thought. Like him, he supposed. He was sixty-two, and felt older.

“I’ll have to clear a few things out,” he said, and then almost laughed at the understatement.

“I don’t mind the mess,” Tommy said.

“We can put some of it in the shed. Not too damp this time of year, and I can cover it with the tarpaulin.”

For the next half hour, they worked silently together, carrying boxes and carrier bags downstairs and outside in the dark to the small shed by the back door. Stealthily, while Tommy was outside, Malcolm transferred several of the Heather boxes, including the one with the scent, into his own bedroom, placing them carefully at the bottom of the wardrobe.