Alone, a broken figure sat on a bench, hunched against the wind, and looking out towards the water’s edge as if he had been there all his life. The sky was so grey and heavy, and the sea so grey and heavy, that it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.

Maureen paused. Her heart hammered inside her ribs. She walked towards Harold, and then she stopped again, standing right beside him, although he didn’t look up or speak. His hair touched the collar of his waterproof jacket in soft curls that she ached to reach out and stroke.

“Hello, stranger,” she said. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

He didn’t answer, but he tucked his jacket close to his hips and shunted along the bench to make space. Waves came at the beach and broke in white fringes of foam, flinging forward small stones and broken pieces of shell, and then leaving them behind. The tide was coming in.

She took her place beside him but a little way apart. “How far do you think those waves have travelled?” she said.

He shrugged and shook his head, as if to say, That is a very good question, and I really don’t know. His profile was so hollow it looked eaten away, and shadows hung beneath his eyes, dark as bruises. He was a different man yet again. He seemed to have aged years. What was left of his beard was pitiful.

“How was it?” she said. “Did you visit Queenie?”

Harold kept his hands slotted between his knees. He nodded. He didn’t speak.

She said, “Did she have any idea you were arriving today? Was she pleased?”

He gave a sigh like something cracking.

“You did – see her?”

He nodded, but the nod kept moving up and down, as if he had omitted to send his brain the message to stop.

“So did you talk? What did you say? Did Queenie laugh?”

“Laugh?” he repeated.

“Yes. Was she pleased?”

“No.” His voice was weak. “She didn’t say anything.”

“Nothing? Are you sure?”

Another series of nods. His reticence was like a disease. It seemed to creep over Maureen too. She tugged her collar closer to her chin. She had expected him to be sad and exhausted; but that, she had assumed, would come from finishing his journey. This was a sort of apathy that sucked the life out of you.

She said, “What about her presents? Did she like them?”