CHAPTER 1
“For Christ’s sake, Siá¢n, we’ll not get there in time! She’s going to be on her own!”

“Yeah, but she’ll have Arris there, aye?”

“Yes, but this is make or break time, na?”

CHAPTER 54
The cars were there and it was finally time to face the day’s events. Mam looked old for once, the life that had kept her age from her eyes finally slipping away from her. Dad… I had stayed away from that thought for so long, but now it was a truth that hit me between the eyes… Dad sat with her, doing what he had to, doing what should never have been necessary.

CHAPTER 53
He was back in Crawley once more, the treatments wearing away at him, and this time Von was at her father’s, her own wear and tear needing some running repairs. She wasn’t hiding from Ian, I was sure, but her own family continued to live and breathe in what must have felt like another world.

CHAPTER 52
I was being pulled in so many directions at once I felt I might tear down the middle.

“Stop fussing, Neil. It’s a bloody wig; they don’t get ‘conditioned’, OK?”

Mam was sat at the dresser doing things to herself while Larinda shepherded the girls next door, but Nelly just HAD to help me, as he saw it. I turned to face him, taking his hands.

“Girl stuff, pet. We take our time but we get there in the end, aye?”

CHAPTER 50
That was a seriously odd arrangement. I mean, there were so many tents outside the church it looked more like some sort of festival than the wedding of a vicar, or of anyone else, come to that. For just an instant, I felt completely at sea among so many people, unable to focus on individual faces, and then people started to emerge from the background, rather like one of those hidden object puzzles.

CHAPTER 48
My eyes went straight to Von, and I saw her stiffen. Reading her mind wasn’t necessary just then, for everyone who knew her would understand what it was she was facing. Her left eyelid twitched just once, and then she buckled on her smile, her shield.

“Hello, Eddy. Is… is my boy treating you well?”

I could almost smell the fear coming off the young men, and I admired Will just then; loved him, in fact. Eddy coughed.

CHAPTER 46
It sounds trite to say something as obvious about your own wedding day as ‘I will never forget…’ but that was a simple fact. Things happened, people were there, that engraved it on my soul. One thing, one instant…

CHAPTER 44
Ian lost his job the week after Von took him home. Prolonged sick leave, unsatisfactory attendance, whichever snide form of words they used it came down to the same thing: the companies he dealt with didn’t want a dying man anywhere near their businesses, their premises or their staff. Perhaps they thought he was infectious. I swore when he told me, but the fatigue, the resignation, sat in his voice when he answered me.

CHAPTER 42
He was gone again, home to catch up on his job, Von driving, and I had to ask myself how in hell he was managing to keep it together over there. No girls, no family, nothing to look forward to but another session of poisoning. I asked Von how he was doing it, and she simply looked away, blushing. Ah.

“It’s not sex, see? We don’t… he can’t, can he? All chewed up. Just, look, felt right to give him some comfort, innit?”

CHAPTER 41
I sat by his bed as he cried, holding his hand with my right while my left held the tissues ready.

“I can’t do this any more, Jill!”

CHAPTER 38
“Aunty Jill, where’s the spare loo roll?”

“Under the sink in the wooden cupboard”

“They’re all wooden!”

“The one that LOOKS like wood, Bethy!”

“Oh, right…got it!”

CHAPTER 36
We worked our way through the graveyard, following the old habit of looking for the oldest stone, the youngest and most tragic death. There, on the edge, in a clearer spot, was the one I wanted to see, the shape and pattern so, so familiar.

“This was Alec’s, Stewie’s friend, yeah?”

“Aye, pet. Thought, you know, pay some respects. I mean, all of this here, it sort of comes from her, aye?”

My wife nodded. “You do too, I suppose. This lot, they pulled you out of the crap”

I turned to her, and kissed her gently. “I rather think you had a lot to do with that, love”

“I don’t like to blow my own wotsit---no, don’t even think about making that joke!”

CHAPTER 34
I returned with the three parcels, and caught my wife’s eye as I approached. When I reached them, Hays was partway through a declaration of how old she was and what age Santa was meant for. Ian had been absolutely spot on: she had found a route to grow, to become a person, rather than something left out of sight in a bedroom so as not to irritate her mother.

CHAPTER 33
In the end, it was Eric who came through with a result. Kate knew the right administrators to approach, but it was a man I hardly knew who moved and shook the right people to find Ian his bed.

Annie rode over to see us with the news that weekend, and I had to ask how her husband had managed it.

“Think about it, aye? He runs the path lab. Every surgeon, every oncologist, they all have to come through him, so he gets to know them, aye?”

CHAPTER 32
It was Larinda who reacted first, once again showing who was stronger in our partnership. Ian had cut me off to ring Ralph, Neil, any others who he could find the strength to tell, and my wife just took the phone from my hands, looked through a small notebook she pulled from her handbag and dialled a number. We were still in loudspeaker mode.

“Brains’r’Us Undead Deli!”

CHAPTER 30
It seemed my lover had moved things on beyond what she had admitted to me, and rather presented me with a fixed and fully prepared package. She had been in touch with just about everyone involved, tweaking the details and filling in little boxes where necessary.

“Why not somewhere closer, Pet, like Holland?”

CHAPTER 29
“And what exactly are we planning? “

She almost whispered, “It’s me that’s been doing the planning”

“Aye, well it’s ‘us’ now, OK?”