On the twenty-sixth day, and six miles south of Stroud, Harold decided to stop. He had retraced the five miles to Bath, and kept walking from there for a further four days along the A46, but the mistake he had made about his direction deeply disturbed him, and the going was hard. Hedgerows reduced to ditches, and drystone walls. The land opened out, and stretched to the left and right. Giant pylons marched as far as he could see. He observed these things but felt no interest as to why they occurred. Whichever way he looked at it, the road was something that never stopped, and never yielded its promise. It took every scrap of himself to keep moving when he knew in his heart he could not make it.

Why had he wasted so much time, looking at the sky and the hills, and talking to people, and thinking about life, and remembering, when all along he could have been in a car? Of course he couldn’t do it in yachting shoes. Of course Queenie couldn’t keep living, just because he’d told her to do so. Every day, the sky hung low and white, lit by a silvery spoke of sunlight. He lowered his head so that he would not see the birds swooping overhead, or the traffic passing in a flash. He felt more lonely and left behind than he would have done up a faraway mountain.

In making his decision, he wasn’t only thinking of himself. There was Maureen too. He missed her more and more. He knew he had lost her love, but it was wrong to walk out and leave her to pick up the pieces; already he had caused her too much sorrow. And there was David. In the days since Bath, Harold had felt a painfully long distance from him. He missed them both.

Finally there was the money. The guesthouses had been cheap, but all the same he couldn’t afford to keep spending like this. He had checked his account at the bank, and been shocked. If Queenie was still alive, and if she was interested in a visit, he would take the train. He could be in Berwick by the evening.

The woman on the other end of the line said, “Have you rung before?” He wondered if she was the same nurse with whom he had left his original message. This voice was Scottish, he thought, or was it Irish? He was too tired to know.

“Could I talk to Queenie?”

“I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t.”

It was like hitting a wall he hadn’t seen. “Is she –?” His chest was smarting. “Is she –?” He couldn’t say it.

“Are you the gentleman who was travelling by foot?”

Harold swallowed something sharp. He said that yes, he was. He apologized.