He fell silent, and so did Martina. He felt safe with what he had confided. It had been the same with Queenie. You could say things in the car and know she had tucked them somewhere safe among her thoughts, and that she would not judge him for them, or hold it against him in years to come. He supposed that was what friendship was, and regretted all the years he had spent without it.

♦

In the afternoon, while Martina did her cleaning job, Harold fixed his reading glasses with plasters and then he wedged open the back door, in order to clear the small garden. The dog sat watching him with interest, but it didn’t bark. Harold found her partner’s tools and tidied the edges of the lawn, and pruned back the branches of the hedge. His leg was very stiff, and since he couldn’t remember what he had done with his shoes, he walked with bare feet. The warm dust worked on his heels like velvet, and melted the tension. He wondered if he had time to tackle the tree that obscured the bedroom window, but it was too high and there was no ladder.

When she returned from work, Martina presented him with a brown paper bag inside which he found his yachting shoes, resoled and polished. She had even given them fresh laces.

“You don’t get service like that on the NHS,” she said, moving away before he could thank her.

♦

That night they ate together, and Harold reminded her she must let him pay for the room. She said they would see one another again in the morning, but Harold shook his head. He would be gone with the first light; he needed to make up for lost time. The dog sat at his feet, its head resting on Harold’s lap. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet your partner,” he said.

Martina frowned. “He isn’t coming back.”

The shock hit him like a blow. He was suddenly having to reconfigure his idea of Martina and her life, and the abruptness of that seemed brutal. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” Martina’s face buckled. She pushed aside her plate, although she had not finished.

“How can you not know?”

“I bet you think I’m fucking crazy.”

Harold thought of the people he had already met on his journey. All of them were different, but none struck him as strange. He considered his own life and how ordinary it might look from the outside, when really it held such darkness and trouble. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said. He offered his hand, and she studied it a moment as if a hand was something she had not considered holding before. Her fingers touched his.