In those days Maureen had not been one to listen to other people. So what if he had no education. So what if he had no class. So what if he rented a basement room and did so many jobs he barely slept. She looked at him and her heart tipped sideways. She would be the love he’d never had. Wife, mother, friend. She would be everything.

Sometimes she looked back to the past and wondered where the reckless young woman was that she had been.

Maureen went through his papers, but there was nothing to explain why he was walking to Queenie. There were no letters. No photographs. No half-scribbled directions. All she discovered in his bedside drawer was a picture of herself just after they were married, and another crumpled black and white one of David that Harold must have hidden there, because she clearly remembered sticking it in an album. The silence reminded her of the months after David had left, when the house itself seemed to hold its breath. She put on the television in the sitting room, and the radio in the kitchen, but still it was too empty and quiet.

Had he been waiting for Queenie for twenty years? Had Queenie Hennessy been waiting for him?

It would be rubbish day tomorrow. Rubbish was Harold’s department. She went online and ordered brochures from several companies who ran summer cruises.

As dusk fell, Maureen saw she had no choice but to do the rubbish herself. She hauled the bag down the path and threw it against the garden gate, as if in being Harold’s neglected duty the rubbish was also to blame for his departure. Rex must have spotted her from an upstairs window because he was at the fence as she came back.

“Everything all right, Maureen?”

She said briskly that it was. Of course it was.

“Why is Harold not doing the rubbish this evening?”

Maureen glanced up at the bedroom window. Its emptiness struck her so forcefully that an unexpected rush of pain tore at the muscles inside her face. Her throat tightened. “He’s in bed.” She forced a smile.

“Bed?” Rex’s mouth dropped. “Why? Is Harold poorly?”

The man worried so easily. Elizabeth had once confided across washing lines that his mother’s fussing had turned him into the most appalling hypochondriac. She said, “It’s nothing. He slipped. He twisted his ankle.”

Rex’s eyes widened like buttons. “Did this happen during his walk yesterday, Maureen?”

“It was only a loose paving stone. He will be fine, Rex. What he needs is rest.”

“That’s shocking, Maureen. A loose paving stone? Dear oh dear.”