“Yes, yes.” She gave an impatient flick of her hand.

“I see,” said the locum, chewing his lip.

Maureen smelt victory. She watched him carefully as she said, “What I want to know is – if you, as a doctor, thought Harold was putting himself in danger by walking, could he be stopped?”

“Stopped?”

“Yes.” Her throat felt stripped. “Could he be forced to return home?” The blood beat so hard through her head it hurt. “He can’t walk five hundred miles. He can’t save Queenie Hennessy. He must be made to come back.”

Maureen’s words rang through the silence. She placed her hands on her knees, palm against palm, and then she tidied her two feet one beside the other. She had said what she had set out to say, but she wasn’t feeling what she had set out to feel, and needed to impose physical order on an uncomfortable emotion that was swelling inside her.

The locum grew still. From outside she heard a child crying, and wished to goodness someone would pick it up. He said, “It sounds as if we have a strong case for getting the police involved. Has your husband ever been sectioned?”

♦

Maureen rushed from the doctor’s surgery, sick with shame. In explaining both Harold’s past and his walk, she had been forced to see things for the first time from his point of view. The idea was insane and completely out of character, but it wasn’t Alzheimer’s. There was even a beauty in it, if only because Harold was doing something he believed in for once, and against all the odds. She had told the locum she needed time to think, and that she was worrying over nothing; Harold was just a little senior. He would be home soon. He might even be there already. She had ended up with a prescription for low-dosage sleeping tablets for herself.

As she walked towards the quay, the truth came as bright as a light snapping on through the dark. The reason she had stayed with Harold all these years was not David. It wasn’t even because she felt sorry for her husband. She had stayed because, however lonely she was with Harold, the world without him would be even more desolate.

♦

Maureen bought a single pork chop and a yellowing bunch of broccoli at the supermarket.

“Is that all?” said the girl at the check-out.

Maureen couldn’t speak.

She turned into Fossebridge Road and thought of the silence of the house that lay waiting for her. The unpaid household bills, in their neat but no less intimidating pile. Her body grew heavy, her feet slow.

Rex was trimming the hedge with clippers as she reached the garden gate.

“How’s the patient?” he said. “Getting better?”

She nodded her head and went inside.

12

Harold and the Cycling Mothers