And me.
I had been dismissed from his life three days earlier in the legal sense — the auditors had gone to the police on the third — and I sat at the back in a black coat and nobody asked me to leave and nobody spoke to me except the neighbour, who assumed I was staff.
Grady spoke for about four minutes. He was steady, and he was good, and he told a story about his mother taking him out of school at eleven to see a house she was thinking of buying and then not buying it.
He did not mention the unit. He did not mention Verity, who had done fifty-odd round trips. He did not mention me.
He thanked everybody for coming.
And then he stood by the door afterwards and shook nine hands, including mine, and said: "Thank you for coming," in exactly the voice he used at our wedding when he thanked my aunt for the salad bowl.
