How was it that things had gone so wrong? They had been happy once. If David had caused a rift between them as he grew, it had been a complicit one. “Where’s David?” Maureen might ask, and Harold would simply reply that he had heard the front door shutting as he cleaned his teeth. “Ah yes,” she would say, to show it wasn’t a problem that their eighteen-year-old son had taken to wandering the streets at night. To voice Harold’s private fears would only compound hers. And the fact was she still cooked in those days. She still shared Harold’s bed.

But such unspoken tensions could not hide themselves for ever. It was just before Queenie’s disappearance that things had finally ripped open and splintered apart. Maureen had railed. She had sobbed. She had beat his chest with her fists. “Call yourself a man?” she had howled. And another time: “It’s your fault. All this. It would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for you.”

It had been unbearable to hear those things, and even though she had wept in his arms afterwards, and apologized, they were in the air when he was alone, and there was no unsaying them. It all came from Harold.

And then it had stopped. The talking, the shouting, the catching his eye. This new silence was different from before. Whereas once they had wished to spare one another pain, now there was nothing left to salvage. She didn’t even have to give voice to the words in her head. He knew simply by looking at her that there was not a word, not a gesture, he could say or do to make amends. She no longer blamed Harold. She no longer cried in front of him; she wouldn’t allow him the comfort of holding her. She moved her clothes into the spare room and he lay in their marital bed, not going to her because she didn’t want him, but tortured by her sobs. Morning would come. They would use the bathroom at different times. He would dress and eat breakfast while she paced from room to room, as if he was not there, as if never keeping still was the only way to contain a person’s feelings. “I’m off.” “OK then.” “See you later.” “Yes. OK.”

The words meant nothing. They might as well have been Chinese. There was no bridging the gap that lies between two human beings. Just before his retirement, he had suggested they might for once go to the brewery Christmas party and she had stared back at him with her mouth gaping as if he was guilty of assault.