“You need to take the dog. His wife is something to do with the Blue Cross.”

♦

It seemed that people were taking offence if the pilgrims did not visit their town. The mayor of a resort in North Devon gave an interview claiming Harold was ‘white middle-class elitist’, and Harold was so shaken he felt the need to apologize. He even wondered if he would have to walk home, taking in all the places he had failed to pass en route to Berwick. He admitted to Kate the fruit drinks were playing havoc with his digestive system.

“But Rich told you,” she said, “you don’t have to drink them. You can throw it away as soon as the photo’s taken.”

He smiled sadly. “I can’t hold the bottle and remove the lid and then not drink it. I’m a postwar child, Kate. We don’t talk up our achievements, and we don’t throw things away. It’s how we were brought up.”

Kate reached up her arms and gave him a damp hug.

He wanted to return it, but he stood rather helpless in her embrace. Maybe that was another symptom of his generation? Certainly he looked at the people around him in their vest tops and their shorts, and wondered if he had become superfluous.

“What’s troubling you?” she said. “You keep wandering off.”

Harold straightened himself. “I can’t help feeling this is wrong. All the noise. All the fuss. I appreciate how much everyone has done but I don’t see any more how it’s going to help Queenie. We only covered six miles yesterday. And seven the day before that. I wonder if I should go.”

Kate swung round very suddenly, as if she had received some sort of blow to her chin. “Go?”

“Get back on the road.”

“Without us?” she said. There was panic in her eyes. “You can’t. You can’t leave us. Not now.”

Harold nodded.

“Promise me.” She gripped his arm. The gold of her wedding ring caught the sunlight.

“Of course I won’t go without you.” They walked on in silence. He wished he had not mentioned his doubts. It was clear she had no room for them.

Yet despite his promise, Harold remained troubled. They had good periods of walking but – with illness and injury and so much public support – it took almost two weeks to cover sixty miles; they were not yet in Darlington. He imagined Maureen seeing pictures of him in the newspapers and he was ashamed. He wondered what she thought when she saw them. If she thought him a fool.