‘Terry, I am so so sorry,’ she said. And perhaps it was the future as well as the past that she might have meant, as if she saw his dreams. But did not believe them.

Very very slowly Terence Blue moved nearer to the grey-haired woman, moved nearer to her, smoothed her hair from her face; then at last, slowly because his own shoulder was so stiff, he put his arms very carefully around her, careful of her shoulder that had been so damaged on the winter night in Brighton when the car he was driving skidded on the ice and struck her so long ago; careful, like a man with a moth in his hands.

‘You didn’t kill anybody at all my darling,’ he said. He touched her hair again, but infinitely gently. ‘It will take a long time maybe. But I will be here now. We’ll see where you are safest, and that’s where you will stay.’ And then, almost like a vow he added, ‘You will see Nicky, that I do know the meaning of love.’

And, at last, as he had in the kitchen in Brighton just a few months ago, because such was his own pain now that he could not help it, he buried his face in her grey hair.

After a moment, very slowly she reached for his hand. And very very slowly and uncertainly she placed it on her breast, where it had been that night in Brighton in 1961, when Harry and Juliet rang the doorbell at two in the morning, that night when they were young.

The junior nurse had never seen anything so shocking in her life. She could feel it in the air, it was sex, these old people. She didn’t know what she should do, she was sure this wasn’t permissable.

She cleared her throat.

But the couple stayed just where they were, quite still in the small room, quite still in each other’s arms.

40

Molly McKenzie had no family for Christmas Day. She had made Banjo her family and Banjo had left her for her young friend Viola Bonham, who she had always loved. He left messages on her answering machine saying how he thought of her every day, wondered how she was, hoped they could have a meal together soon. She never answered, not even when she thought she would go mad with grief and loss and pain and betrayal.

She was lucky, she looked young for her age, but now when she walked down the street, the swing in her step had gone. She noticed her knees ached sometimes when it rained, wondered if this was the beginning of rheumatism or arthritis. Little aches and pains came to her, reminding her that in four years’ time she would be sixty. In four years’ time she would travel half price on buses and trains with a pensioner’s pass.