The land fell away to the left and right, opening towards the faraway hills. Harold overtook two young women with buggies, a boy on a scooter with a multicoloured baseball cap, three dog walkers and a hiker. He spent the evening with a social worker who wanted to be a poet. The man offered to top up Harold’s lemonade with beer but Harold declined. Alcohol had brought unhappiness in the past, he said; both to himself and those close to him. For many years he had chosen to avoid it. He talked a little about Queenie; how she liked to sing backwards, and tell a riddle, and had a sweet tooth. Her particular favourites were pear drops, sherbet lemons and liquorice. Sometimes her tongue would be a violent shade of red or purple, although he hadn’t liked to tell her. “I fetched her a glass of water and hoped that would do the trick.”

“You’re a saint,” said the man, when Harold told him about walking to Berwick.

Harold crunched on a pork scratching and insisted that he wasn’t. “My wife would back me up on that.”

“You should see the people I have to deal with,” said the social worker. “It’s enough to make you give up. You really believe Queenie Hennessy is waiting?”

“I do,” said Harold.

“And that you can get to Berwick? In a pair of yachting shoes?”

“I do,” he repeated.

“Don’t you ever get scared? All on your own?”

“At first I did. But I am used to it now. I know what to expect.”

The social worker’s shoulders rose and dropped. He said, “But what about other people? The sort I deal with? What will happen when you come across one of them?”

Harold thought of the people he had already met and passed. Their stories had surprised and moved him, and none had left him untouched. Already the world had more people in it for whom he cared. “I’m an ordinary chap, passing by. I’m not the sort who stands out in a crowd. And I don’t trouble anyone. When I tell people what I’m doing, they seem to understand. They look at their own lives and they want me to get there. They want Queenie to live, as much as I do.”

The social worker was listening so carefully, Harold felt a little hot. He reached for his tie and straightened it.