‘Paul was on board with it from the start. He loves it when I do good things. It’s one of his favourite things about me, that I’m the kind of person who does that, so it seemed right to be doing a good deed by asking Ruth to be my maid of honour at the wedding. A good omen. And well … it might have helped that I asked him while we were in bed and I was doing a little something.’

‘This whole place would fall apart without my Ruth. Little Ruth is a powerhouse. Does as much as two of those kids in a day. Probably in an hour! And she has time for everyone in here. She is kind to everyone – even that horrible man on the third floor. That man and his daughter, I swear to God, I’ve never seen anything like it. He spits his pills back out, if you can believe it. For the sake of it. He needs his meds, all right, that man.’

‘At first she wouldn’t even sit down. I insisted. I don’t know why I did, I just had to start somewhere, so I just kept saying: Calm down, darling, have a seat, tell me what happened. Eventually I kind of just picked her up under her armpits and physically lifted her to sit on the counter. That’s when she really started sobbing, like she needed to make herself comfortable enough before she could really let go. “He’s gone, he’s gone,” she kept saying, and though I asked her to tell me when it had happened, where, she wouldn’t say, so I hugged her. Her sadness seeped right through my clothes. It chilled my bones: I can’t explain it – it was a big, huge sadness. It was frightening.’

‘She likes me to tell her tales of the sea. She says, Miss Phyllis, tell me a story, as if she were a child. She’s never been to America and she says that the first time she does she’d like to go like I did, on a ship. She’s a romantic, like myself, so I understand her well. So I say, dear girl, it is beautiful to see the Statue of Liberty as it approaches, but don’t forget about all the puking. I could feel the ground rolling under my feet for days afterwards. I say, if you can fly, fly, don’t you think, Constable? I say to her, my dear Ruth, why do you always have to do things the hard way?’

‘She stares.’

‘Honestly, I couldn’t even believe she’d been with that sleazebag for ten years in the first place. That horrible man – so full of himself! Always putting her down. I’d been feeling so sorry for her! I think this is all for the best.’