6pm. Monday, 13th November
Bunty Moss let herself in to the house with a key she borrowed from a neighbour.
James didn’t get home till eight most days. Standing in the hallway, the front door out into the rainy day still open behind her, she rang Pam.
“He’ll be so pleased. How’s your brother, Bunty?”
It took a heartbeat for Bunty Moss to process the question.
“Long since dead, thank you, Pam.”
There was an intake of break the other end. Confusion.
“I’m so sorry. Let me put you through.”
The black-bound Bible was on the hall table. Walsh didn’t need it where he was. He’d died with his hand in hers. She didn’t know how it got there. If she had to guess, she’d say the young man who came looking for Peggy left it for her. She placed her palm against the cover, and it felt warm to the touch.
“Bunty?”
Her husband’s voice. Hope. Desperation. Thirty-five years of loving her.
She could hear too the faint noise of planes outside her husband’s office as he wept down the phone. He wasn’t a man for emotion in the general way of things. Landing and taking off. The gateway to a nation. Business as usual.