Lord! They did it in the garden shed once, on the workbench. Torn stockings, bruised backside, the air stinking of petrol from the lawnmower. He had scars on his back. A dozen ridges of purple skin, and when she asked him about them he winked at her and said it was a girl in Amsterdam with long nails. But nails don’t make marks like that. She used to touch them, stroke them very lightly, as though his back were rucked velvet she could smooth with her fingertips. What had he done with his pain? Had it come out later? Did he take to drink too? Or had someone helped him when he needed it? Making love he called dancing. She’d known next to nothing about sex before Samuel, and after him hadn’t learned much that seemed worth knowing.

The year her father died he was posted back to Holland. He left her a ring – not a diamond ring, but a gold band that had belonged to his mother, and which had his mother’s name engraved in curly letters on the inside. Margot. It had been too small to wear and it wouldn’t have been right. It was a keepsake. A remnant. The little Jewess’s ring. The little Jewess they had turned into ashes.

How wonderful if she could believe she’d see him again ‘on the other side’; some celestial cocktail party where everyone was young and interesting and Nat King Cole was singing ‘When I Fall In Love’. But she didn’t believe it, didn’t believe in the other side at all. The last of her faith had ebbed away during the chemo. A night on her knees by the side of the bed vomiting into a bucket, and above her just miles of emptiness. No gentle Jesus. No saints or angels. Religion was a night-light for children – Stephen had been right about that. Eyewash. Osbourne was harmless. One of the old fashioned type. ‘Black cloth a little dusty, a little green with holy mildew.’ She could tease him, and he had always been nice to the boys. Rather fancied her once, when she was first a widow. Popping round for glasses of sherry, offering to do the lawn, carrying out the black bin-bags of Stephen’s things for the charity shop. Did he mean to try to catch her at the end? Run across the meadow with his box of tricks when he heard she was going? She would have to speak to him. No mumbo-jumbo, Dennis, dear, when I’m too weak to tell you to get lost. He could say what he liked when it was over. Whatever made it easier for the others.