Then afterwards, when the cars had gone, the reverend had found that he couldn’t stop thinking of her. Her stillness. Her pride. She would enter his mind at the most awkward moments. Raising the host at communion or marrying some young couple on a Saturday, his thoughts suddenly clouded with envy. For the first time in his life he had wanted something – someone – as much as he wanted God. That was what it amounted to. But he had been too cautious, too unsure of his ground, too concerned with the opinions of others. Afraid for it to be thought that he was taking advantage, a widow fresh in her loss, the earth hardly bedded down on her husband’s grave. So he had missed his chance – if, indeed, there had ever been a chance. For it was hard to think she could have been interested in him. A Blimpish priest. An old bachelor even then, in his forties, with his garden, his books, his slide shows of the Holy Land. What had he had to offer a woman like Alice? It was almost comical really. What possible advantage could she have found in loving him?

When she woke, startling him, he was not sure that she recognized him, not at first. Heaven knows what they had given her. Yet somehow they managed a conversation, though he had found it hard to follow the flight of her thinking, and after fifteen minutes the effort of expressing herself made her irritable and tearful. She accused him of coming to see if she was dead. She demanded to know where Alec was, why he hadn’t come, a question the reverend was at a loss to answer. But when it was time for him to leave (they were bringing in the lunch trolleys, those fiercely jolly women), she had not wanted to let go of his hand and so he had stayed standing by the bed until, quite unexpectedly, something revived in her, something of the old Alice, and she had smiled at him and said, ‘Go on, Dennis. Off you go.’