Chapter 24: The Photograph, Again

On Sunday morning I heard the bikes before I saw them.

They came down Pauline's street in a line at ten o'clock, forty engines at a walking pace, and the windows hummed.

The old brother rode at the front with the white beard blowing back.

Behind him came the young prospect with a bunch of yellow flowers tied to his handlebars.

Nobody had asked me to go on the ride this year.

Nobody had needed to.

They rode to the moor for Ewan the same way they had for six years, and none of them had ever once said his name wrong.

At the end of the street the old brother lifted one gloved hand to Pauline's window.

I lifted mine back.

Then they were gone, and the street was quiet.

Pauline's kitchen smelled of bacon and warm bread.

She had the good tablecloth on, with the pattern of cherries, and in the middle of it sat the box.

I had carried it down from our wardrobe myself.

It was a plain grey cardboard box with soft corners, from a hospital shop.

I lifted the lid.

Ewan's old wristband was on top, a strip of paper no wider than a finger, with his name in felt tip.

There was the curl of hair in its twist of tissue.

There was the scan, with the hole where Joss's thumb had worn it through.

Pauline put her hand over her mouth.

"I'd have knitted him a hundred blankets," she said. "If you'd asked."

"I know," I said. "I didn't know how to ask."

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