As soon as it was light, she fetched the car keys from the hall table and slipped a coral lipstick into her handbag. Locking the front door, she was surprised to hear Rex call her name. He was wearing a sunhat, a pair of shades, and he was clutching a hardback road map of the British Isles.

“I thought you might need someone to navigate,” he said. “According to the AA, we should be there by late afternoon.”

The miles sped past, but she barely saw them. She said things while knowing that none of them added up; as if she were saying words that were only the tip of the huge mountain of feeling beneath. What if Harold didn’t want to see her? What if the other pilgrims were with him?

“Supposing you’re wrong, Rex?” she said. “Supposing he is in love with Queenie after all? Maybe I should write? What do you think? I feel I might say it better in a letter.”

When he said nothing, she turned to Rex and found him looking peaky. “Are you all right?”

He gave a tight nod, as if he were afraid of moving. “You have overtaken three articulated lorries and a coach,” he said. “In single-lane traffic.” He added that he thought he would be fine, if he sat very still and looked out of the window.

♦

It was easy to find Harold, and the pilgrims. Someone had arranged a photoshoot for the tourist board in the pedestrianized market square and Maureen joined a small crowd. There was a tall man ushering photographers, and also a gorilla who appeared to need a chair, as well as a stout woman eating a sandwich, and a young man looking shifty. Catching sight of Harold as if she were no more than a stranger, Maureen was disarmed. She had seen him on the local news, and she kept the newspaper clippings in her handbag, but none of it had prepared her for seeing him ‘in true life’, as David used to say. Harold surely couldn’t have grown taller or broader, but looking at this weather-beaten pirate of a man, with his skin like dark leather and his curling hair, she felt she had become both one-dimensional and more fragile. It was the pared-down vitality of him that made her tremble; as if he had at last become the man he should have been all along. His pilgrim T-shirt was stained and frayed at the neck. The colour was gone from his yachting shoes, and the shape of his feet was practically through the leather. Harold caught Maureen’s eye, and stopped short. He said something to the tall man and broke free.