It was like a jigsaw, with each day’s entry a piece of that terrible time in her life. But she couldn’t fit them all together to form a complete picture.

‘We’ll help you do that when you bring it in,’ Marge had said, when Karen had called her in her distress. ‘Leave it for now. Take a walk. Go to one of Jack’s favourite places, where you can feel close to him.’

Heeding Marge’s advice, Karen now donned her jacket and, locking the front door, set off down the garden path.

She would tackle a walk she and Jack had often taken together of an evening, before the onset of his illness. Even after the dementia had been diagnosed, they’d kept to their routines, until Jack eventually forgot what any of those routines were.

Music from around the time they’d met had helped for a while, bringing him out of his stupor, putting life back into his eyes. They said that music awakened areas of the brain seemingly lost to the illness. Karen believed that because she’d seen it happen.

I should start listening to music again, she mused.

But the sudden thought of listening to their songs without Jack brought such a swift rush of horror, she immediately dismissed the idea.

She would try a familiar walk first, just as Marge had suggested. She would, she decided, head across to King’s Knot. Charlie, their dog, had always loved being taken to the former king’s gardens at the foot of Castle Hill.

As she entered the large grassy space, a man appeared with a little brown dog. He nodded a hello, but Karen didn’t recognize him, so didn’t respond. Seemingly unperturbed by this, both man and eager dog walked on. The image of the two of them on their, probably regular, evening walk made Karen wonder whether she should get a dog again.

Charlie had died shortly after Jack got noticeably ill. In truth, Karen had been relieved. She could no longer walk the old black lab because she couldn’t leave Jack alone in the house, even for a minute.

Now she could leave the house, she no longer had a companion to go with her.

Trying not to think along those lines, Karen chose the path that hugged the steep wall of imposing grey rock, spotting the man just ahead of her. The dog had been let off the lead and was tearing after a ball. Its owner had stopped, no doubt waiting for the dog to bring the ball back to him.

As Karen drew near, the man turned and, realizing who it was, looked as though he might speak to her.

Dealing with people was still a problem for Karen. All those months shut in with Jack, wondering who was going mad the quickest, she’d lost the knack of casual conversation.

Of any conversation.

True, the recovery cafe had helped, but even that had taken time and a great deal of effort on the part of the other women before Karen had been able to join in the conversation at all.