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  Harold let the man talk, and hold his arm, but he couldn’t reply or move his face.

  ‘Who is your son? What is his name?’ said the man. ‘Maybe I could help?’

  ‘His name is—’

  Suddenly Harold’s heart plummeted, as if he had stepped over a wall and was tumbling through emptiness. ‘He’s my son. His name is—’

  The manageress looked coolly back at him, waiting, waiting, with the customers behind her, and the kind man with his hand on Harold’s sleeve. They had no idea. No idea of the horror, the confusion, the remorse raging inside him. He couldn’t remember his son’s name.

  Out on the street, a young woman tried to give him a piece of paper.

  ‘It’s salsa dancing classes for the over sixties,’ she said. ‘You should come. It’s never too late.’

  But it was. It was far too late. Harold shook his head wildly, and took a few more staggering steps. His legs felt boned.

  ‘Please take the leaflet,’ said the girl. ‘Take the lot. You can throw them in the bin if you like. I just want to go home.’

  Harold stumbled the streets of Berwick with the wodge of leaflets, not knowing where he was going. People swerved to avoid him, but he didn’t stop. He could forgive his parents for not wanting him. For not showing him how to love, or even giving him the vocabulary. He could forgive their parents, and their parents before that.

  All Harold wanted was his child.

  27

  Harold and Another Letter

  Dear Girl in the Garage,

  I owe you the full story. Twenty years ago I buried my son. It is not something a father should have to do. I wanted to know the man he would become. I still do.

  To this day, I don’t understand why he did it. He was depressed, and addicted to mixing alcohol with pills. He couldn’t get a job. But I wish with all my heart he had spoken to me.

  He hanged himself in my garden shed. He did it with some rope, tied to one of the hooks I used for garden tools. He was so full of the alcohol and pills, the coroner said it must have taken a long time to tie the noose. The verdict was suicide.

  It was me who discovered him. I can barely write this. At the time I prayed, although as I told you at the garage I am not a religious man. I said, Dear God, please let him be OK. I will do anything. I lifted him down, but there was no life. I was too late.

  I wish they hadn’t told me about him taking all that time to tie the noose.

  My wife took it terribly. She wouldn’t leave the house. She put up net curtains because she didn’t want the neighbours prying. Gradually those people moved away and no one knew about us, or what had happened. But every time Maureen looked at me, I knew she saw David dead.

  She began talking to him. He was with her, she said. She was always waiting for him. Maureen keeps his room exactly as it was the day he died. And sometimes it makes me sad all over again, but it is what my wife wants. She can’t let him be dead, and I understand that. It is too much for a mother to bear.

  Queenie knew all about David, but she didn’t say anything. She looked out for me. She fetched tea with sugar and talked about the weather. Only once she said, Maybe you’ve had enough now, Mr Fry. Because that was the other thing. I was drinking.

  It started off as just one to keep me steady before the coroner’s report. But I was keeping the bottles in paper bags under my desk. God knows how I drove home at night. I just wanted to stop feeling.

  When I was really out of it one night, I dismantled the garden shed. But even that wasn’t enough. So I broke into the brewery and I did something terrible. Queenie knew it had to be me and she took the blame.

  She was fired on the spot and then she disappeared. I heard she had been warned to get out of the South West, if she knew what was good for her. I also overheard a secretary who was friendly with Queenie’s landlady saying that she had not left a forwarding address. I let her go. I let her take the blame. But I gave up drinking.

  Maureen and I fought for a long time, and then gradually we stopped talking. She moved out of our bedroom. She stopped loving me. There were many times I thought she would leave, but she didn’t. I slept badly every night.

  People think I am walking because there was a romance between myself and Queenie all those years ago, but it isn’t true. I walked because she saved me, and I never said thank you. And this is why I am writing to you. I want you to know how much you helped me all those weeks ago, when you told me about your faith and your aunt, although I fear my courage has never matched yours.

  With best wishes and my humble thanks,

  Harold (Fry)

  PS. I apologize for not knowing your name.

  28

  Maureen and the Visitor

  FOR DAYS MAUREEN had been preparing the house for Harold’s return. She had taken the two photographs he kept in his bedside drawer and measured them up for frames. She had repainted the best room a soft shade of yellow, and hung a pair of pale-blue velvet curtains at the window, which she had picked up at the charity shop, good as new, and shortened. She baked cakes to store in the freezer, as well as a selection of pies, moussaka, lasagne and boeuf bourguignon; all those dishes she had cooked in the days when David was alive. There were jars of her runner bean chutney in the cupboard, along with pickled onions and beetroot. She kept lists in the kitchen and bedroom. There was so much to do. And yet sometimes, when she looked out of the window, or lay awake listening to the gulls crying like children, she felt that despite her activity there was something about it that was inactive, as if she were missing the point.

  Supposing Harold returned home and told her he needed to walk again? Supposing he had outgrown her, after all?

  A ring at the doorbell in the early morning brought her downstairs. She found a sallow-faced young girl waiting on the threshold, with lank hair, and wearing a black duffel coat although it was already warm.

  ‘Please could I come in, Mrs Fry?’

  Over tea and several apricot flapjacks, the girl told her she was the one who had given Harold the burger all those weeks ago. He had sent her many lovely postcards; although due to his sudden rise to fame there had been an inconvenient number of fans and journalists hanging about the garage. In the end her boss had been obliged to ask her to leave for health and safety reasons.

  ‘You lost your job? That’s terrible,’ said Maureen. ‘Harold will be very sorry to hear this.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Fry. I didn’t like the job anyway. Customers were always shouting, and in too much of a hurry. But what I said to your husband about the power of faith has been bothering me ever since.’ She looked fidgety and anxious; she kept tucking the same strand of hair behind her ear, although it wasn’t out of place. ‘I think I gave him the wrong impression.’

  ‘But Harold was inspired by what you said. It was your faith that gave him the idea to walk.’

  The girl sat bunched up in her coat and gnawed at her lip so hard Maureen was afraid she would draw blood. Then she tugged an envelope out of her pocket, and removed several sheets of paper. She held them out, but her hand was trembling. ‘Here,’ she said.

  Maureen’s mouth bent into a frown. ‘Salsa for the over sixties?’

  The girl reached for the papers and flipped them over. ‘The writing’s on the other side. It’s a letter from your husband. It came to the garage. My friend warned me to fetch it before the boss saw.’

  Maureen read in silence, weeping over each sentence. The loss that had wrenched them apart twenty years ago was as lacerating and incomprehensible as if it was happening afresh. When she finished, she thanked the girl and folded the letter, running her nail along the crease. Then she posted the letter back inside its envelope. She sat, very still.

  ‘Mrs Fry?’

  ‘There’s something I need to explain.’

  Maureen wet her lips and let the words come. It was a relief. Moved as she was by Harold’s confession, it felt right to share the facts at last about David’s suicide, and the grief that had split his
parents apart. ‘We shouted for a while. I blamed Harold terribly. I said awful things. That he should have been a better father. That the drinking was in Harold’s family. And then we seemed to run out of words. It was about that time I began talking to David.’

  ‘You mean he was a ghost?’ said the girl. She had clearly seen too many films.

  Maureen shook her head. ‘Not a ghost, no. More like a presence. A feeling of David. It was my only comfort. I said little things at first. “Where are you?” “I miss you.” Things like that. But as time went by, I said more. I said everything that I didn’t say to Harold. There were times when I almost wished I hadn’t started; but then I worried that if I stopped talking, I would somehow betray David. Supposing he really was there? Supposing he needed me? I told myself that if I waited long enough I might see him. You read about things like that in those magazines at the doctor’s, while you’re waiting. I wanted to see him so much.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘But it never happened. I looked and looked but he never came.’

  The girl stuffed her face into a tissue, and bawled. ‘Oh God, that’s too sad.’ When she emerged her eyes were so small and her cheeks so red her face looked peeled. Strings of saliva looped from her nose and mouth. ‘I’m such a fraud, Mrs Fry.’

  Maureen reached out her hand for the girl’s. It was small as a child’s, but surprisingly warm. She gave it a squeeze.

  ‘You’re not a fraud. It was you who began his journey. You inspired him when you talked about your aunt. You mustn’t cry.’

  The girl let out another sob and plunged her face back into the tissue. Raising her head again, she blinked her poor eyes and took a shuddering deep breath. ‘That’s just it,’ she said at last. ‘My aunt’s dead. She went years ago.’

  Maureen felt something falling away. The room seemed to give a tremendous jolt, as if she’d just missed her step on the stairs. ‘She’s what?’ Words stuck in her mouth. She opened it and swallowed and swallowed again. Then in a rush: ‘But what about your faith? I thought it saved her? I thought that was the whole point?’

  The girl dug her teeth into the corner of her upper lip, so that her jaw shot out sideways. ‘If cancer’s got hold of you, there’s nothing that’s going to stop it.’

  It was like seeing the truth for the first time, and realizing she had known it all along. Of course there was no stopping terminal cancer. Maureen thought of the many people who had come to trust in Harold’s walk. She thought of Harold, trudging, even while they spoke. A shiver ran through her. ‘I told you I was a fraud,’ said the girl.

  Maureen pummelled her forehead lightly with her fingertips. She could feel more coming from a long way deep inside, but unlike the truth about David, this caused her racking shame. She said slowly, ‘If anyone is the fraud here, I’m afraid it’s me.’

  The girl shook her head, clearly not understanding.

  Maureen began to tell her story, quietly and slowly, not looking at the girl because she had to focus on tugging out each word from the secret place where she had been hiding them for all this time. She told how, twenty years ago, after David’s suicide, Queenie Hennessy had come to 13 Fossebridge Road, asking for Harold. She had looked very pale, and she was carrying flowers. There was something extremely ordinary and yet very dignified about her.

  ‘She said, could I give Harold a message. It was about the brewery; there was something she needed him to know. And after she had told me what it was, she gave me the flowers and went away. I suppose I was the last person she saw before she left. I put the flowers in the bin, and I never gave him the message.’ She stopped; it was too painful and too shameful to go on.

  ‘What did she tell you, Mrs Fry?’ said the girl. Her voice was so gentle it was like a guiding hand in the dark.

  Maureen faltered. It had been a difficult time back then, she said. This could not excuse what she had done, or not done, and she wished it had been otherwise.

  ‘But I was angry. David was dead. I was jealous too. Queenie was kind to Harold, when I couldn’t be. If I gave him her message, I was afraid he would find comfort. And I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want him to find comfort when there was none for me.’

  Maureen wiped her face, and continued.

  ‘Queenie told me how Harold had broken into Napier’s office one night. She had seen him sitting outside the brewery earlier that evening in his car. She hadn’t gone over. She thought he might be crying and didn’t wish to intrude. It was only when the news went round the following day that she had put two and two together. It was grief, she said; grief made people behave in the strangest ways. In her opinion Harold was on a course of self-destruction. In smashing those Murano glass clowns to smithereens, he was deliberately challenging Napier to do his worst. Their boss was hell bent on revenge.’ Maureen paused and dabbed her nose. ‘So Queenie took the blame. Being a plain woman, she said, made it easier; Napier was thrown off balance. She told him she had accidentally knocked the clowns while dusting.’

  The girl laughed, but she too was crying. ‘You mean to say this all happened because your husband smashed some glass clowns? Were they valuable?’

  ‘Not at all. They had belonged to his mother. Napier was a vicious thug. He had three wives, and he gave them all black eyes. One ended up in hospital with broken ribs. But he loved his mother.’ She gave a limp smile, which hung on her face a moment, until she shrugged and cleared it away. ‘So Queenie stood there and took the blame for what Harold had done; and then she let Napier fire her. She told me all this, and she asked me to tell Harold not to worry. He had been kind to her, she said. It was the least she could do.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell him?’

  ‘No. I let him suffer. And then it became another of the things we couldn’t say, and drove us further apart.’ She opened her eyes wide and let the tears fall. ‘You see, he was right to walk out on me.’

  The garage girl didn’t answer. She took a further flapjack and for several minutes she seemed to be thinking of nothing other than the taste of it. Then she said, ‘I don’t think it’s true that he walked out on you. I don’t think you’re a fraud either, Mrs Fry. We all make mistakes. But I do know one thing.’

  ‘What? What?’ moaned Maureen, rocking her head in her hands. How could she ever mend the mistakes of so long ago? Her marriage was over.

  ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t be stuck here, making biscuits and talking to me. I’d be doing something.’

  ‘But I drove all the way to Darlington. It made no difference.’

  ‘That was when things were good. A lot has happened since then.’ Her voice was so slow and certain Maureen lifted her head. The girl’s face was still pale, but it suddenly shone with disarming clarity. Maureen maybe gave a start, or even cried out, because the garage girl laughed. ‘Get yourself to Berwick-upon-Tweed.’

  29

  Harold and Queenie

  AFTER WRITING HIS letter, Harold had persuaded a young man to buy him an envelope and a first-class stamp. It was too late to visit Queenie, so he spent the night in his sleeping bag on a bench in the municipal park. Come the early morning, he visited the public lavatories where he washed and combed his hair with his fingers. Someone had left a plastic razor on the sink, and he pulled it through his beard. It didn’t give him a proper shave but the bulk of it was gone, so that it was more like prickles than curls, but the odd tuft remained. The flesh around his mouth looked bleached, and somehow disconnected from the leathery skin that held his nose and eyes. He lifted his rucksack over his shoulder, and made his way to the hospice. His body felt hollowed out, and he wondered if he needed food. He had no appetite. If anything, he felt sick.

  The sky was covered with thick white cloud, although the salt air smelt already warm. Cars of families were arriving with picnics and chairs to set up home on the beach. Far out on the horizon, the metal sea sparkled against the morning light.

  Harold knew an end was coming, but had no idea how it would be, or what he would do afterwards.

  He turned
into the drive of St Bernadine’s Hospice, and once more walked the length of the tarmac. It had been recently laid; his feet fell softly. He pressed the buzzer, without hesitating, and while he waited he closed his eyes and groped for the wall. He wondered if the nurse who would greet him might be the same woman he had spoken with on the telephone. He hoped he wouldn’t have too much to explain. He hadn’t the energy for words. The door opened.

  Before him stood a woman whose hair was covered, and who wore a long, cream high-collared robe, with a belted black over-garment. His skin shivered all over.

  ‘I’m Harold Fry,’ he said. ‘I have walked an awfully long way to save Queenie Hennessy.’ He was suddenly desperate for water. His legs trembled. He needed a chair.

  The nun smiled. Her skin was soft and smooth; what he could see of her hair was grey at the roots. She reached out her hands and took Harold’s between her own. They were warm, and rough; strong hands. He was afraid he would cry. ‘Welcome, Harold,’ she said. She introduced herself as Sister Philomena and urged him to enter.

  He wiped his feet, and then he did it again.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, but he couldn’t stop. He was pounding his shoes on the threshold. He lifted them to check there was nothing on them, and he was right, but still he kept scraping his soles against the stiff mat; the way he used to have to do for his aunts before they would allow him into the house.

  He stooped to unpeel the duct tape but it took a while and kept attaching itself to his fingers. The longer he took, the more he wished he wasn’t doing it.

  ‘I think I should leave my yachting shoes at the door.’ The air inside was cool and still. There was a smell of disinfectant that reminded him of Maureen, and another that was hot food, possibly potato. He used the toe of one shoe to ram his other foot free, and then he repeated the process. Standing in his socks, he felt both naked and small.