‘Oh, Con. It’s so up my street. I always found it so heartbreaking when a patient was dying and I had no time or facility to help.’ He took a large gulp of wine. ‘It won’t be up and running for a couple of months or so. But if this works out, it might be two, three days a week …’

Connie laughed with delight at seeing her husband so invigorated, the light back in his eyes.

‘And I really like Sylvie,’ he went on. ‘She’s so straightforward and professional. I’m going to drive over next Monday, meet her, check the place out.’

They spent the rest of the meal discussing the potential job. This, Connie thought, is what we’ve both been waiting for. She wasn’t thinking in terms of her tours, just that Devan would finally be busy and engaged again.

‘Then me and Bill got chatting to this guy in the pub at lunchtime.’ Devan interrupted her thoughts. ‘Says he’s just signed up for a six-month rental on Mr Solomon’s place. Plans to move in in a couple of weeks, apparently.’

‘Jill heard the same from her friend at Tovey’s. Weekender?’

‘Nope. Wants to try living in the country, he says. Seems to be on his own, didn’t mention a wife or girlfriend. I liked him. Youngish, seemed intelligent and well-travelled. It’s nice to have someone under sixty moving into the village, for a change.’

19

By mid-October, two months after Connie had fallen ill, she felt back to some semblance of her old self. She’d finally had her hair coloured and trimmed – the grey roots she’d been seeing in the mirror every morning only adding to her sense of decline – and treated her nails to a rare luxury manicure. She was almost back to her normal weight but, most crucially, she could feel the veil of torpor lifting.

These days, she woke with cautious optimism, mentally scanning her body as she lay in bed for signs of weakness, finding none. It seemed as if she’d been through some sort of test … and emerged undeservedly unscathed. Although part of her still listened for the buzz of the aircraft overhead, the moment when the bomb would finally drop and she would be punished.

This morning Connie turned to her husband. Watching his face as he slept, she realized that the lingering tensions between them were much reduced, as Devan had got stuck into working with Sylvie. She wondered what lay ahead for them, in these last decades of their lives.