Maureen felt something falling away. The room seemed to give a tremendous jolt, as if she’d just missed her step on the stairs. “She’s what?” Words stuck in her mouth. She opened it and swallowed and swallowed again. Then in a rush: “But what about your faith? I thought it saved her? I thought that was the whole point?”

The girl dug her teeth into the corner of her upper lip, so that her jaw shot out sideways. “If cancer’s got hold of you, there’s nothing that’s going to stop it.”

It was like seeing the truth for the first time, and realizing she had known it all along. Of course there was no stopping terminal cancer. Maureen thought of the many people who had come to trust in Harold’s walk. She thought of Harold, trudging, even while they spoke. A shiver ran through her. “I told you I was a fraud,” said the girl.

Maureen pummelled her forehead lightly with her fingertips. She could feel more coming from a long way deep inside, but unlike the truth about David, this caused her racking shame. She said slowly, “If anyone is the fraud here, I’m afraid it’s me.”

The girl shook her head, clearly not understanding.

Maureen began to tell her story, quietly and slowly, not looking at the girl because she had to focus on tugging out each word from the secret place where she had been hiding them for all this time. She told how, twenty years ago, after David’s suicide, Queenie Hennessy had come to 13 Fossebridge Road, asking for Harold. She had looked very pale, and she was carrying flowers. There was something extremely ordinary and yet very dignified about her.

“She said, could I give Harold a message. It was about the brewery; there was something she needed him to know. And after she had told me what it was, she gave me the flowers and went away. I suppose I was the last person she saw before she left. I put the flowers in the bin, and I never gave him the message.” She stopped; it was too painful and too shameful to go on.

“What did she tell you, Mrs Fry?” said the girl. Her voice was so gentle it was like a guiding hand in the dark.

Maureen faltered. It had been a difficult time back then, she said. This could not excuse what she had done, or not done, and she wished it had been otherwise.

“But I was angry. David was dead. I was jealous too. Queenie was kind to Harold, when I couldn’t be. If I gave him her message, I was afraid he would find comfort. And I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want him to find comfort when there was none for me.”

Maureen wiped her face, and continued.