There was an old man in the bed, tucked up underneath the eiderdown. He was breathing heavily. Dora walked towards him. He was fast asleep. He had thick white hair, tousled on the pillow. Nasal fracture, badly set. His eyelashes were still kohl-black, though Dora could imagine that his dark eyes were now faded. In repose, his face hadn’t changed, hadn’t aged.

She leant over and kissed his temple. ‘Geoffrey.’

He didn’t stir. Best not disturb him. He must be tired. There was a photo on the bedside table. She picked it up. Clipped onto the frame was a picture, torn from a newspaper. A mugshot, her features grainy and indistinct in the newspaper image, the red cocktail dress showing grey.

She walked around to the other side of the bed, kicked off her shoes, unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. She climbed into the bed beside him and sidled close, cradling his back. She reached over him with her arm and felt for his hand. She squeezed it. She felt him stir a little and squeeze it in return.

She pushed her face close to him, burying her nose in his back, breathing in his scent, of soap and sweat, the old fabric of his shirt. She felt the press of his body, its imprint on her own.

‘Geoffrey,’ she said again. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

Dora’s arm across his body cradled him as his chest rose up and down, up and down. She was home, sleepy. When he woke, they’d talk as if nothing had happened. He lay still, putt-putting in his sleep, she a soft companion to his softer silence, like the night they first met.

The storm broke outside and rain hammered at the bedroom window.

Epilogue: Joe

EPILOGUE

JOE

St Helier, Jersey: ten years later

Joe drained his cup and put it down. It wasn’t like home, but he had his own room and had been allowed to bring in a single piece of furniture and a picture.

‘Something familiar, to make your room more personal,’ the manager had said. He’d taken one of the Windsor chairs from the kitchen and put the photograph of Dora and Geoffrey and Barbara into a frame which he’d found in the charity shop.

‘That’s nice. Are they family?’

‘They are,’ Joe said. Who would understand their story if he tried to tell it here?

It was shot with Barbara’s camera.

‘Take a photo of us, Joe.’

The three of them, sitting on the old bench outside the house. Geoffrey died of pining, Joe thought, for the years gone and the years that would never come. But he’d been happy for three weeks, the old man and Dora, side by side on the garden seat, looking at horizons they would never see.