Two hours later, Mary Kate was in the back of a cab with Mrs O’Keefe and Cat. They were talking, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Their voices were a mumble as she stared out of the rain-spattered window into the dark night. One orange sulphur street light after another lit her face as she focused on two years of precious memories, on his face when he slept, his eyes when they laughed at her, the strength of his arms as he wrapped them around her when they walked the dog along the beach at Crosby. She would shut out the world and spend forevermore dwelling in these thoughts, she decided. She would live them over and over again. They would sustain her until it was her turn to join him.

‘Come on, Mary Kate, my love,’ said Mrs O’Keefe, who was now standing on the gravel drive with the cab door open.

Mary Kate hadn’t noticed they’d stopped. On her knee was a brown paper bag filled with Nicholas’s belongings. His watch, his books, the daily letters she used to leave with him to read while she wasn’t allowed on the ward. She hugged it to her. The clothes inside smelt of him and it was easy to close her eyes and imagine him there next to her. She didn’t want to move.

‘Mary Kate…’ This time it was Cat. ‘Come on, love, let me take the bag.’

Without waiting for an answer, Cat reached in, took the weight of the brown paper bag from her knee and gently guided Mary Kate out of the cab. Mrs O’Keefe took her other arm and they supported her on her feet. The two older women exchanged glances; the next few days would be counted in minutes. Both had loved and lost and knew this. Counting the hours and days of loss would be next. Then the weeks and months. Both women knew that grief was a physical pain, that it sat in the diaphragm, the worst of aches.

Cat had used the phone in Matron’s office and called ahead to Joan and Deidra, who would no doubt need consoling, especially Joan, who had loved the kind Dr Nicholas in her own way. But Mrs O’Keefe knew something was wrong the second she opened the Marcuses’ front door. There was no Joan or Deidra waiting, and neither of them would have been wearing the stiletto heels she could hear clacking towards them on the tiled floor of the hallway. She could smell cigarette smoke and her heart lurched. In an instant, she knew who it was.

Dry-eyed and immaculate, in a pale blue cashmere twinset and pearls, her blonde hair neatly curled and with her tweed pencil skirt swishing against the sharkskin underskirt, Lavinia Marcus stood before them.

‘Returned at last,’ she sneered.

It was apparent that Mary Kate couldn’t take in what was happening. She blinked and Cat squeezed her arm.

‘Well, you bog-jumping Irish whore, I have only one thing to say. I am legally his wife and this is my house. Here’s your bag.’ She bent down, lifted up Mary Kate’s small tartan suitcase and threw it onto the floor before them, missing Mrs O’Keefe’s foot by inches.