Harold thought of the day when she came out of the funeral director’s and looked at him before snapping down her sunglasses, and he felt that in that one glance they had made a pact that would oblige them for the rest of their lives to say only what they did not mean, and to wrench apart what they most loved.

Remembering all this in the hospice where Queenie lay dying, Harold trembled with pain.

He had believed that when he saw her he could say thank you and even goodbye. That there would be a meeting of a kind, and that somehow it would absolve the terrible mistakes of the past. But there could not be a meeting, or even a goodbye, because the woman he had once known had already left. Harold thought he should stay, leaning on the windowsill, until he could accept this. He wondered if he should sit again; if being in the chair would make a difference. But even before he sat, he knew it wouldn’t. Sitting or standing, he knew that it would take a long while before he could sew into the fabric of his life the knowledge that Queenie was reduced to this. David was dead too; there was no bringing him back. Harold tied the quartz to a curtain ring with a quick knot. It hung against the light, and twisted, so slight it was barely noticeable.

He remembered fiddling with his laces the day David almost drowned. He remembered driving from the funeral parlour with Maureen, knowing everything was over. There was more. He saw himself as a boy, after his mother had left, prostrate on his bed, and wondering if the stiller you kept, the greater the chances might be of dying. And yet here, years later, was a woman he had known briefly, but tenderly, fighting to keep the small amount of life that was left. It was not enough. It was not enough to stay on the sidelines.

In silence, he walked to Queenie’s bedside. And as her head turned, and her eye found his, he sat in the space beside her. He reached for her hand. Her fingers were fragile, barely flesh at all. They curled imperceptibly and touched his. He smiled.

“It seems a long time since I found you in the stationery cupboard,” he said. At least he wanted to say that; but maybe it was only a thought. The air remained still and empty for a long time, until her hand slipped out of his, and her breathing grew slow.

A rattle of china caused him to start. “Are you all right, Henry?” asked the young sister, jollying into the room with a tray.

Harold looked again at Queenie. She was dozing.

“Do you mind if I leave the tea?” he said. “I have to go now.”

And Harold did.

30

Maureen and Harold