There came a memory long forgotten. It was so close Queenie could almost taste it. She was running down the stairs of her childhood home, in her red leather shoes, and her father was calling her, or was it the good man, Harold Fry? She was rushing, and laughing because it was so funny. “Queenie?” he was calling. “Are you there?” She could see the shape of him, tall against the light, but he kept calling her and casting his eyes everywhere except where she stood. The breath caught with a knot in her chest. “Queenie!” She longed for him to find her at last. “Where are you? Where is that girl? Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said. The light was very bright. Even behind her eyelids, it was silvery. “Yes,” she called, a little louder so that he would hear. “Here I am.” Something twisted at the window and showered the room with stars.

Queenie parted her lips, hunting for the next intake of air. And when it didn’t come, but something else did, it was as easy as breathing.

32

Harold and Maureen and Queenie

Maureen took the news quietly. She had booked a double room, close to the seafront. They had eaten a light meal, and afterwards she had run Harold a bath and washed his hair. She had shaved his chin carefully and moisturized the skin. As she trimmed his nails and rubbed his feet, she told him all the things she had done in the past which she so regretted. He said it was the same for him. He seemed to be coming down with a cold.

After she had taken the call from the hospice, she reached for Harold’s hand. She told him exactly what Sister Philomena had said; that Queenie looked peaceful at the end. Almost childlike. One of the younger nuns believed she had heard Queenie call something just before she died, as if she were reaching for a person she knew. “But Sister Lucy is young,” said Sister Philomena.

Maureen asked Harold if he would like to be alone, but he shook his head.

“We’ll do this together,” she said.

Already the body had been moved to a room beside the chapel. They walked behind the young nun, without speaking, because words at that moment felt too hard and too brittle. Maureen could hear the sounds of the hospice, the hushed voices, a brief peal of laughter, the slushing of water in pipes. From outside she briefly caught birdsong, or was it singing? She felt she had been swallowed by an inside world. At a closed door, they stopped and again Maureen asked Harold if he would like to be alone. Again he shook his head.

“I’m frightened,” he said, his blue eyes searching hers.