As I walk beside his coffin to our Lister corner of the church with my three charges following sadly behind me, the responsibility for them bears down on me and I worry that I cannot protect them from anyone who may try to take away our freedoms. Anyone who may insult us. Anyone who may wish to damage our property like they did the Moss House. Anyone who may try to strike them.

Aunt is frail and Marian seems older, more gaunt, past any chance of a match now, beholden to me entirely. My Ann, so beautiful still, but carrying the weight of the world on her gentle shoulders. Eyes are on her throughout the service; they cannot look away as she weeps for Father. They cannot understand the grief of this wayward Walker; who was he to her, they question? When, if life was fair, he would have been her father-in-law and they would sympathise.

Even familiar faces, the Priestleys, the Norcliffes, Mariana and old Lawton, who have all journeyed over for the service, look upon us as a sorrowful sight. All four of us now dressed in black, like a Lister uniform. I look around the church and note how they have all dressed like me for this saddest of occasions. I no longer stand out; all of us are joined together on this one day where my colour is everyone’s.

He is lowered into the ground, watched and mourned by his two single daughters, his single sister, and a single stray who was swept into his home and fell under the Lister curse: to be an outsider.

None of us knows what to say. People whom I have known my entire lifetime give me their condolences, but do not look me in the eye.

How brave of Father to have accepted us as we are, to have created a home for us and taken us all in. I shall miss him terribly.

Miss Walker

To try to stop myself from crying in the church, I busy myself looking at Mariana and Isabella, the women who have had orgasms with my wife. It should have been just us four left alone to grieve, but funerals are a spectacle, an event; even military folks turned up, all uniforms and medals, people we’d never seen before who pledged they knew Mr Lister well, and there she stood, having to smile and thank each one of them, hear their condolences. She is so brave, my love. I later sit with Aunt who also seems so frail now, the last of her generation, as the sisters go out for a walk after the funeral.