Epilogue

And the years went by. Forty of them, and I was here again in the hospital with Kenny.

Mum and Dad were gone. Jenny was still Jenny. She hardly looked different, but she was a little old lady now.

I’d been in the room with Kenny for six hours. They told me he didn’t have long. He was asleep for most of the time. Twice he woke up and looked at me, and I took his hand in mine – as I had all those years ago, when he’d saved me. He was bald, Kenny, from the chemo. But he was going bald anyway. A bit of fuzz had grown back on his head after they’d stopped the treatment. It was so soft it was hard to resist the urge to stroke it.

They loved their uncle Kenny, my two kids. He’d never got tired of playing with them when they’d been small.

“Do horsy, Uncle Kenny!” they’d squeal, and they’d both ride around on his long back.

He’d had their names, Ruth and Stan, tattooed on his knuckles.

Kenny had loved his job at the garden centre. He’d always wanted to work with animals, but that had never happened, and plants were the next best thing.

I think his life had been happy.

Happier than mine? Maybe. I was OK. Me and Sarah had our ups and downs, but we were still together. Teaching was hard work, but it was good when you saw some snotty‑nosed scamp in Year 7 growing up and getting four A levels and going off to uni.

Kenny opened his eyes again. This time they focused on me, rather than into the world beyond.

“Did Tina really go to the farm to be a sheepdog?” Kenny said, his voice just a sigh.

I hadn’t thought about our little Jack Russell for years. I thought about lying to Kenny now, but I couldn’t, not at the end.

“No, Kenny,” I said. “Tina kept me warm until the mountain rescue team found us. She gave up all her warmth for me.”

Kenny’s breathing carried on for a while.

“You shouldn’t have told me a lie, Nicky.”

“I know, brother,” I said. “But I didn’t want you to be sad.”

Breathing, breathing.

“Will Tina be in heaven?” Kenny asked.

“I think she will, yeah.”

“And will I see her there?”

“Course you will, Kenny.”

“How will I find her?”

“You won’t have to,” I said. “She’ll come and sniff you out when you get there.”

Breathing, breathing. Softer. Kenny’s eyes were almost closed.

“Nicky?” he murmured.

“Yeah?”

“All our adventures … Snuffy and Rooky, and when we got that watch off that man who was drowned …”

“Yeah. I remember,” I said. “I remember all of them. They’re not the sort of things you forget.”

“You always said you’d write them down. Get them made into a book.”

I had said that. I’d told my kids all about the stuff we’d got up to, me and their uncle Kenny. But I’d never had the time to sit down and write it all out.

“I’ve been … busy, Kenny. Life gets filled up with stuff.”

“Promise me you will,” Kenny said.

“What?”

“Write it all.”

“Aye, Kenny, I will.”

“You’ve got to promise.”

“I promise.”

Kenny’s eyes were closed now, but he nodded.

And then his last words, so faint I could hardly hear them. Yet in another way so loud that they rang out like the ecstatic song of the lark in the endless blue sky.

“Tell me a story.”