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“love” with “Mum”, it describes her perfectly.’

      He read 1 Corinthians 13:4–8.

      ‘“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”’

      He was doing so well until the last line, when he broke down. ‘“Love never ends …”’

      And I cried again then, too: for Joe, Marion, my own mum, absent parties, it didn’t matter. Crying was just a nice release.

      I waited for the congregation, plus any undesirables from schooldays who might be lurking, to leave. Then I went to find Joe. He was standing near the gate, talking to an old woman in a floppy velvet hat.

      ‘Then it was 1980 and I think your mum only had Rory … no, wait … maybe she had Simon, too.’

      Joe spotted me and stretched his hand over the lady’s shoulder so that our fingers touched. ‘Sorry, excuse me, Betty. Here she is!’ I couldn’t help but notice how his face lit up.’

      ‘Hi, look, I’m not stopping,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to interrupt. I just wanted to say, beautiful service for a beautiful lady – and your reading, Joe, it made me cry.’

      ‘Oh, I think Ethan stole the show.’

      ‘They were both gorgeous,’ I said. ‘Your mum would have been really proud.’

      The old lady started off on one again … ‘No, I’ve just remembered, Simon was about five months old …’ and I took the opportunity to study Joe’s face. I’d last seen him three years ago, in the pub on one of the rare Christmases I’d spent in Kilterdale, and been surprised to feel a stab of jealously at the fact he was with Kate, his girlfriend at the time. That he’d even moved in with her. He’d aged since then (but then, grief does that to you). The dark circles he was always prone to around his eyes were more pronounced, and when he smiled, which was often, there were quite deep lines running from his eyes to his hairline, which when I studied him closer, was peppered with a few grey hairs. But older suited him; as though he’d always been older, his face just waiting to catch up. Every time our eyes met, I saw that behind his eyes was the same person I’d known.

      The woman took a breath. I really had to go.

      ‘Joe, I’ll call you, okay?’ I said, squeezing his hand. ‘I don’t want to interrupt,’ but he squeezed mine tighter.

      ‘But you’re not interrupting.’ His eyes were pleading with me. ‘Come on, don’t go yet. Please? This is Betty.’

      Betty looked pretty cheesed off I’d waded in and ruined her flow.

      ‘Betty used to be a lollipop lady, and knew us all from the very first week Mum and Dad moved to Kilterdale. She used to cross us over to primary school, didn’t you, Bet? Hand me bootleg sweeties from her pocket.’

      ‘He was a bloody nuisance,’ she said, and Joe and I laughed. ‘A few penny sweets and he was high as a kite.’

      Joe had been diagnosed as hyperactive when he was little, and was never allowed sweets or stuff like Kia-Ora. By the time I met him, at sixteen, he was still bouncing off the walls most of the time, but I’d always loved that about him – his energy.

      I said, ‘He didn’t improve with age.’

      ‘How do you know?’ said Joe. ‘You haven’t spent any time with me for sixteen years.’ He was looking at me, quite intently. I couldn’t help think that comment was loaded. ‘Anyway, this is Robyn.’ He said, eventually.

      ‘Robyn, eh?’ said Betty. ‘That’s a funny name for such a bonny girl. Is she the lucky lady?’

      ‘No, no …’ Joe said. ‘There is no lucky lady at the moment, Bet.’

      So he was no longer with Kate?

      ‘Robyn’s a friend. A very old, good friend.’ His gaze was intense enough for it to make me look away.

      ‘She’s a l’il corker, too. Look at all that lovely thick hair,’ Betty said.

      ‘Now you’re making me blush, Betty,’ I replied.

      ‘Oh, I still blush,’ said Bet, ‘and I’m eighty-six!’

      Betty eventually gave Joe her condolences and shuffled off. I really did have to be getting back to Dad and Denise’s, even though an evening with them – Dad watching Gardener’s World, Denise bringing him endless, elaborate snacks, didn’t exactly fill me with glee. I opened my mouth to say as much when, from out of the corner of my eye, I saw a thickset bald bloke making his way over. He had one child by the hand and was pushing a twin buggy – with twins in it – with the other. Stopping, he slapped an arm around Joe. ‘Hey, Sawyer!’ It was only when he was right up close that I realized it was Voz. ‘You did really well, mate. I wouldn’t have been able to stand up there and do that.’

      ‘Cheers, Voz,’ said Joe, giving Voz a manly back-slapping hug in return. ‘That means a lot.’

      ‘All right, Vozzy?’ I said. I was adopting my old matey, blasé school tones, when really I was shocked. I hadn’t seen Voz for years – since that day Joe nearly drowned at the Black Horse Quarry. Who was this beefcake before me? What had happened to runty Voz?

      ‘All right, Kingy. How are you?’ For some reason, I was touched that he’d used my nickname. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

      ‘You have!’ I said. Joe sniggered. ‘I mean … you look like you’ve been busy.’

      He giggled. When Voz used to giggle, he used to look like a cute rat; now he looked like a cute fat rat, all his pointy, ratty features concentrated in the middle of a big round face.

      ‘Yep, this is Paige.’ The chubby blonde child holding his hand stared back gormlessly at us. ‘Paige is eight.’ (Eight? What had I produced in the last eight years?) ‘And these little monsters are Tate and Logan.’

      Tate and Logan? Bloody hell.

      ‘That’s my missus, Lindsay, over there.’ He pointed to a pretty, dark-haired girl chatting to Joe’s brother. ‘We’ve got another on the way in January.’

      ‘Wow, Anthony, are you going for world domination?’ asked Joe. ‘An assembly line of Vozzies keeping the whole of the northwest in wallpaper?’ (Voz’s dad owned the Wojkovich Wallcoverings empire.)

      ‘You’ve got to get cracking while you can.’ Voz laughed. ‘Any of you got kids yet?’

      ‘No, no …’ said Joe.

      ‘Not that you know of, eh, Sawyer?’

      ‘And what about you, Kingy?’ said Voz, when nobody said anything. ‘I hear you work up on the funny farm?’

      ‘Yep. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, eh?’ I smiled.

      ‘So are you like a shrink? A psychiatrist?’ Voz asked.

      ‘Well, no, I can’t prescribe the drugs, but I can administer them.’

      ‘What, someone leaves you in charge with a needle?’ Voz seemed genuinely alarmed by this.

      ‘Yes, and in people’s own homes. I visit people at home who have mental-health problems.’

      ‘Can you do something about my missus? She’s got a few mental-health problems.’

      ‘I tell you what – because it’s you, Voz – I’ll do a two-for-one.’

      Voz turned round at the sound of two girls talking loudly. ‘That’s Saul Butler’s wife, isn’t it?’ he said, gesturing to the one with red, bob-length hair. ‘Is Butler not here, Joe?’

      I

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