‘He was gorgeous. Had eyes for no one but me, though – nor I him. The only person I ever had to share him with was Jesus. His faith always very important to him. Said his prayers every night.’ She shook her head. ‘It was one thing we never really agreed on. Can’t say I was ever particularly religious in that way myself, and even less so after his passing. Where was God when he needed him?’

She sighed, turning the pages slowly, her eyes glistening with tears. The remainder of the album was devoted mainly to Frank, and most of the time, he had been captured in the garden. I was mesmerised by the images before me. The man exuded an air of brooding intensity, which was apparent in all the photographs. Something about his haunted expression made me uncomfortable.

I couldn’t bring myself to raise the subject of ghosts. It seemed, I don’t know, inappropriate – and I suppose she could have been offended, although given her pagan interests she would probably have been quite open to the idea of a visitor from beyond the grave. But the love she had for him still burned so brightly, and even though she had to live with the knowledge every painful day, it would somehow have felt wrong to remind her that he was no longer living. He was evidently very much alive in her heart. My teacup rattled against its saucer and I realised that I was trembling. My curiosity got the better of me.

‘How long … have you been on your own?’ I asked, my eyes never leaving the picture staring out from the album.

She sighed. ‘You mean when I lost Frank? It’ll have been thirty-two years this Christmas; 1980. Not long after his forty-fourth birthday. It still hurts as though it was only yesterday.’

I thought for a moment, but didn’t like to ask the cause of his death. I gathered that it had been sudden, so assumed it was probably a heart attack. They seem to be frighteningly common in middle-aged men.

I went back to the start of the album, re-examining the pictures of Frank as a younger man. There was one taken with another slightly shorter man of a similar age, with his arm somewhat possessively round Frank’s shoulder, outside the front gate of Rose Cottage. The pair of them were smiling and laughing.

‘Who’s this, Mrs Barley?’

She peered at the image with distaste. ‘That’s Len. He was a sort of – well, a pal of Frank’s, I suppose. Never cared for him much. He died young … but they say what goes around comes around, don’t they?’

‘Why didn’t you like him?’