‘Yes, I lifted your slippers. They’re in your bag, along with your pyjamas and dressing gown.’

‘There was a book in the locker. Did you …’

‘Yes, I lifted it as well. And packed it. Along with your prayer book and your reading glasses.’

He nods. ‘I wonder how many more books I’ll read,’ he says, to himself as much as anything.

‘You know what the doctor said,’ I tell him. ‘Take it one day at a time.’

‘Those days are still numbered, though, aren’t they? I doubt I’ll see the spring.’

He looks out onto the bleak, grey car park of Altnagelvin hospital, on the very outskirts of Derry, Belfast in one direction and the city centre in the other. The sky is almost as dark as the tarmac below us. Heavy and angry-looking. It seems apt.

Joe has always liked spring. More so as he grew older and found comfort in God. ‘A time of renewal,’ he would say as the evenings stretched and the temperatures crept up.

I know as well as he does, there’ll be no renewal for him this year.

‘You never know,’ I say, even though we do know. Odds are he’ll be gone before the seasons change.

He shakes his head slowly, looks ahead. ‘Some things you feel, Heidi.’

I switch on the engine, nudge the car into first gear.

‘It’s not a lot of time, is it?’ he asks. ‘To do all the things I need to do or to make things right.’

Joe McKee could have a whole other lifetime to live and it wouldn’t be long enough for him to make things right. There’s a time in a person’s life, if they are truly, truly wicked, when they move beyond the point of redemption.

I stay quiet. If he’s looking for some sort of absolution, he’s looking in the wrong place.

Ten minutes of a silent drive home later, we pull up outside his house. The house my mother owned, which in turn will belong to me when he is gone. This is where the first almost ten years of my life were blissfully happy. My mother created a loving, warm and magical childhood for me.

Then she died.

Even all these years later, there are times when that realisation hits me like a punch to the gut.

The world has never seemed fair or right since.

‘Will we get you inside?’ I ask Joe.

He nods. ‘I’m tired.’

He looks pale, his eyes red, dark circles around them. The effort of the short journey has worn him out. He looks wretched. It’s almost, but not quite, enough to make me feel sorry for him.

‘Sure, we’ll get you in and to bed then,’ I say. ‘Just let me take Lily in first. I don’t want to leave her here in the car on her own.’

He nods. ‘Of course not.’

I open the door, carry Lily, who is thankfully still sleeping, through to the living room in her car seat and allow myself a few seconds to take some deep breaths. I’m shaking, I realise, but it’s not from the cold. I count my breaths in and out until the shaking lessens. I tuck Lily’s blanket around her, stroke her cheek. Note how she is filling out, changing. Only five months old and already I can see shades of the little girl she will become.