Chloe watches Nan blow out the candles. She longs to be released from this. She knows she’s not alone; she’s seen the other visitors here at Park House – they all have that same haunted look, ground down by the loyalty that has chained them here. But you can’t just give up on someone, can you? Maureen and Patrick never have.

Chloe walks over to the window, and looks out over Ferry Meadows. Today the view is a little obscured by the scaffolding the builders have put up as part of the redevelopment.

‘Nasty stuff,’ a voice says at her side.

Chloe spins round. It’s the matron.

‘Already makes the room so much darker,’ Miriam says. ‘I hate the stuff – and its expensive – but we’d be hard pushed to get the extension done without it.’

Music is playing now – wartime tunes that ease residents back into a world they’re more familiar with. Each resident sits alone, or chats to their neighbour, two trains of conversation running parallel. Chloe catches Nan’s eye then and the old woman flashes her the brightest smile across the room, and for a second, there it is again, a whisper of the woman she once was. It happens still from time to time, as if she has risen to the surface, just for a moment as part of this long goodbye they are living.

Miriam nudges her. ‘She wouldn’t be without you, my love,’ she says.

The lies we tell ourselves to live with ourselves, Chloe thinks. They even do it here, in this place, the last stop.

‘She talks a lot about Stella,’ Miriam says. ‘Was that your mum or was your mum—’

‘Mine,’ Chloe says quickly. Too quickly.

‘Oh, I see, I’m sorry,’ Miriam says. ‘And was it a long time ago, that she . . .’

‘We don’t really . . . I mean, it’s not something I find easy to talk about.’

‘No, no, of course not, Chloe. How silly of me to ask.’

Chloe feels hot inside her clothes suddenly. She crosses the room and kisses Nan goodbye. She needs to get back to Low Drove.

THIRTY-SIX

Chloe walks through the back door of Elm House and finds Patrick in the kitchen. She stops still, reticent now to shut the door behind her. He’s sitting on a kitchen chair, leaning over some newspaper at his feet, a black leather shoe in one hand, a rag black with polish in the other. He looks up when she walks in, then quickly down again. He starts rubbing at the shoe while Chloe’s insides twist. If she could go back outside, she would. But she’s already in. She closes the door behind her. The rest of the house feels quiet, still somehow.

‘Where’s Maureen?’ she says.

Patrick looks up, wipes his hair from his eyes. ‘Gone to Josie’s,’ he says. ‘The two of them are catching up with some old neighbour.’

‘In Chestnut Avenue?’