‘Well, it’s like I told you.’

Cal took the casserole dish over to the sink. As he got close to Mairi, she moved away from him. ‘I’ll just go and check on her,’ she murmured. She left the kitchen and came back a few moments later. ‘Still asleep.’

As Mairi pulled on her anorak, Cal took in her slender figure.

‘I’ll go now and give you time with her.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for everything.’

She smiled sadly at him and the tears welled up.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Mary is special. I’ll miss her.’ Then her tears spilled out. She pulled a paper hankie from her pocket and wiped them away. Cal felt helpless. Embracing her would be inappropriate and the words that came to him seemed insensitive. Defeated, he leaned back against the stove, his head bowed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flustered. ‘I’ll be off.’

She pulled the door open.

‘Mairi,’ Cal said suddenly, ‘I don’t want you thinking I don’t care. I was asleep when you called this morning and what I said didn’t come out right. Please understand that Mary was special to me too. I maybe wasn’t very attentive, but she was always part of my life.’

Why did he so want this woman to believe him?

Mairi stood at the door, looking at him, her eyes soft and red from her tears.

‘I just wanted you to know that,’ he said, gesturing openly with his hands.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You came didn’t you?’

4

CAL SAT WITH Mary, her occasional shallow breaths the only sign of life. At one point he went for a walk through the house to keep himself awake.

The living room and bedroom were the only ones on the ground floor of the original structure, their windows flanking the unused front door. Both opened onto the lobby, which was gloomy because the outside storm doors were closed and the only light came through small, curtained side windows. A flight of stairs led up, doubling back on itself before arriving at the upper floor. A small toilet had been built beneath the stairs. Mary had joked with him that prior to that you had to go outside and hope the wind wasn’t strong. There was barely any room to stand up straight in it, but it served its purpose.

There were two large bedrooms upstairs and a small area on the short landing, barely a room, that had been used for various purposes over the decades. Cal remembered sleeping there on a camp bed. Mary had evidently used it these past years to store an array of items that were beyond their best, but which she thought might come in useful again. There were a couple of chairs, an old Singer sewing machine, a stack of books ranging from faded paperbacks to hardback volumes, dating back many decades. Cal wondered what their value might be. Right at the back was the old camp bed, the springs stiff with rust.

The room above Mary’s had been the one his parents slept in when they came on holiday. It had barely changed since, in all those years. There was a dark mahogany wardrobe with metal handles shaped like oyster shells, and next to it a chest of drawers with smaller versions of the same handles. A full-length swivel mirror stood by the window.