“I say so many things that I don’t mean. It’s as if, even if I think something nice about Harold, by the time it’s got to my mouth it’s become not nice. He goes to tell me something and I’m saying, ‘I think not,’ before he’s finished the sentence.”

“I always got cross with Elizabeth for leaving the top off the toothpaste. Now I throw it away as soon as I open a new tube. I find I don’t want the lid.”

She smiled. His hand was near hers. She brought her own up and fingered the ridge of bone at her throat where the skin was still soft. “When I was young, I looked at people our age and I assumed my life was sorted. It never occurred to me that when I got to sixty-three I’d be in the most appalling mess.”

There were so many things Maureen wished she had done differently. Lying in bed in the morning light, she yawned and stretched, feeling the size of the mattress with her hands and feet; even the cold far corners. Then she moved her fingers to herself. She touched her cheeks. Her throat. The outline of her breasts. She imagined Harold’s hands around her waist, his mouth on hers. Her skin was slack, and her fingertips no longer had the sensitivity of a young woman’s, but all the same her heart beat wildly, and her blood throbbed. From outside came the click of Rex’s front door closing. She sat up sharply. Moments later, his car started and she heard him driving away. She curled back into the duvet, pulling it close against her like a body.

The wardrobe door was partly open, revealing the sleeve of one of Harold’s left-behind shirts, and she felt a stab of the old pain. She threw back the duvet, seeking distraction. The perfect job presented itself as she passed the wardrobe.

For many years it had been Maureen’s system, just as it had been her mother’s, to arrange clothing according to the season. Winter items would be placed at one end of the rail, along with thick pullovers, while summer clothing would be hung at the opposite end, beside lightweight jackets and cardigans. Somehow in her rush to put her own clothes in the wardrobe, she had failed to notice that Harold’s clothes hung higgledy-piggledy, with no reference to weather or texture of fabric. She would go through each piece, throwing out those he no longer needed and hanging the rest properly.