I found out what it was in the February.
Verity told me, because I asked her directly, because by then we had got to the point of asking each other things directly.
At 2:11 in the morning, two minutes before he came out of the house, the night nurse at Ferrow Lodge rang him.
Not about the pneumonia. They had already told Verity about the pneumonia; that is why she had driven four hours and was sitting outside my house.
The nurse rang because she thought he would want to know that at about eight that evening, while the radio was on, Imelda Foyle had said a word.
She had not spoken since the January of 2024.
The word was Grady.
That is what he was smiling at, under the porch light of the house we had just got married into, with his bag in his hand, at thirteen minutes past two in the morning.
