Several nights later, Hilary awoke in the small hours.  She had been dreaming, that Margaret was still alive (as she often did), that Margaret was at the organ and the choir were singing, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”.  This carol was playing through her head like a gramophone record.  They had sung “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”, for the Nine Lessons and Carols in 1973, and Hilary remembered walking to choir practice and her mother sending her home to get the copies from the piano stool.  It was the occasion when Bill Macready’s postcard had fallen out the piano stool on to the floor.

Hilary sat bolt upright in bed, the cold November air cutting through her pyjamas like a knife, as the awful reality hit her.  After showing the postcard to her father, she had replaced it in the piano stool, a quite reasonable thing to do back in those halcyon days.  But now the house was on the market.  The house was about to be “cleared out” - by Frank and Dorrie.  Frank, unconcerned about Bill Macready in 1973, was now under Dorrie’s influence.  In her mind’s eye, she could see Dorrie opening the piano stool… 

She swung her legs out of the warm covers, into the cold night air, and switched on the light.  She ran downstairs, into the dining room and wrenched open the piano stool.  For a moment, sheet music danced in front of her eyes.  She rummaged around, the sound of rustling paper very loud in the dead of night, almost loud enough, it seemed, to wake Frank and Dorrie in Chenham.  She grabbed the postcard, which was lodged against the side of the piano stool and ran back upstairs, almost as if she were being pursued at this very minute, and placed it in the zipped compartment of her own handbag.  

Now wide awake, she tossed and turned until the darkness faded into the grey gloom which counted as morning in November.  These days, she had to get up and be out the house at 7.30 in order to get through the Chenham traffic, park and walk through the university campus to reach her classroom by nine.  Today was Friday - she wouldn’t have to do all this tomorrow.  What else was there in the house, Hilary wondered as she dressed.  Bill had been an intellectual and in love.  He would have written other things. 

Back from university the following evening, Hilary walked from room to room, the enormity of her task ahead almost overwhelming her.  She herself had kept all Andy’s letters, hidden them in her underwear drawer - like every other woman in the world.  She opened the door to her parents’ bedroom.  She hadn't been in there for several days, and, since Frank had moved out, she kept the door shut.  She went through the drawers of her mother’s old fashioned kidney dressing table, but all she found was underwear and jumpers.  She even took the drawers off their runners and searched behind the back, but Margaret had been a tidy woman.

Hilary looked around again.  Something was missing – the jewellery box on the dressing table.  She had dipped her hand into it as last Friday.  Everything else was there, the Blue Grass, the Nulon hand cream, the cold cream…  No, the black and white photo of herself as a baby had gone as well!  Hilary threw herself down on her parents’ bed, furious, her fists clenched into tight white balls.  Her father and Dorrie!  It must be them!  And what else had they found?  She wrenched open the door to the wardrobe, but, to her immense relief, all her mother’s dresses and skirts remained, although, where Frank’s clothes had once hung was a empty, gaping hole.  The wind howled round the corner of the house, reminding her that winter was upon them, one of the normal sounds of home.  She wouldn’t hear it next winter.

Realising that it was now eight o'clock and she hadn't eaten, she went downstairs to the kitchen and to make an omelette.  She ate a lot of omelettes these days.  Omelettes were cheap.  But, when she opened the kitchen cupboard to find the jug to beat her eggs, the top shelf was empty, the top shelf where Margaret had kept her trifle bowl and cut-glass dessert dishes.  Hilary's mouth set into a firm, angry line.  She knew where to look now:  the cutlery drawers - the silver cutlery had gone; the sideboard – the best tea service had gone; two silver dishes; her own silver Christening spoons; a Royal Worcester Evesham flan dish. 

“The shits!” she exclaimed, her voice bouncing off the walls of the empty house.  “The shits!”  She beat the eggs, her fork banging on the side of the jug, and hacked at a very old, hard lump of cheese.  Then, since she was alone, she allowed herself to cry.  She wished she could ring Andy, but no one would answer that dreadful phone at St Luke's, even on the few occasions when it was in working order.

When she could cry no more, she made and ate her omelette and, as she was washing up, she saw, through the blackness of the kitchen window, the lights of the Bryants’ house, several cars in the drive, including Caroline's old Mini.  She knew she ought to ring Caroline, but not tonight.  She had other things to do. 

The dining room, where Margaret's piano stood, was always regarded as Margaret's room, and it would be here, Hilary guessed, where Margaret would find hiding places, amongst the bookshelves that rose to the ceiling and the stacks of sheet music.  It didn’t help that she didn’t know what she was looking for, but Hilary made a start, sifting through dusty, brittle, paperback editions of the classics, looking at the flyleaves and shaking each book to see if anything fell out.  She worked her way through Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham.  On the bottom shelf, half-submerged by the French window curtain, were Margaret's diaries, from the 1940s to last July, but Hilary decided she would deal with those later.  By midnight, books covered the dining room floor and yet she hadn’t found anything… incriminating.  (No, that wasn’t the word.)

She fetched the stepladder from the garage and tackled the top shelves, Bach’s Forty-Eight, several books of organ music, some innocent-looking Gilbert and Sullivan scores… poetry?  Margaret didn’t read poetry!  Hilary opened a faded red, cloth-bound hardback edition of T S Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, printed on the cheap, porous paper used in the immediate post-war era.  At once, she recognised Bill’s spidery hand and bright blue ink on the flyleaf. “To my darling Margaret.  Bill, September 1952.”  “From Bill, supposed to be on retreat, but thinking of you.  March 1953,” read the next flyleaf.  Hilary took down all the poetry books and, for an hour, she sat amidst the heaps of books on the floor, perusing the flyleaves and the poems within, all marked up in the margin by Bill.  Bill wrote of love, never of lust; he never said “You turn me on,” or however that was phrased in the 1950s.  Once, Bill had written of temptation, but his temptation was to love Margaret more than he loved his God…

Hilary realised that that she was nodding off to sleep over Gerard Manley Hopkins and it was 2am.  What could she do with this lot, she wondered, as she climbed into bed?  She would have to move all the books to safety, before the inevitable “clear out” and Dorrie, because she couldn't be sure she hadn’t missed other things Bill had written.

In the morning, Hilary rang George at the pub.  Did he have any cardboard packing cases?  Yes, the crisps came in cardboard boxes, didn’t they?  Did she want some?  Yes, as many as possible.  Hilary packed the books into cardboard boxes, loaded as many as she could fit into her mother’s car, then drove to her grandmother’s empty house.  Mrs Rayner’s friend, Mrs Armitage, appeared at her fence.  “Hello, dear.”

“Hello, Mrs Armitage.”

“I got a letter from Mrs Rayner the other day.  Your auntie’s had her op now, but she’s still poorly.”

“Yes, I know,” said Hilary.

“She won't be home for Christmas.”

“I know.”

Mrs Armitage followed her as she carried boxes inside the house. “You could put them in the little bedroom, the room that was your poor mother’s, when she was a little girl.  You mind you put them down nice and tidy, dear.”

“Mrs Armitage, I'd be grateful if you didn’t mention these books to anyone.  They’re Mum’s.”

“My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be,” replied Mrs Armitage at once.  She picked up a copy of “Bleak House” and peered at the front cover.  “Funny name for a book.  You’d think they’d think of something better, wouldn’t you?” 

Hilary made several journeys, all overseen by Mrs Armitage, until, at last, all that was left were some large books that wouldn’t fit into George’s boxes, and Margaret's diaries, written into hard-bound, quarto, exercise books.  One by one, Hilary removed them from the bookshelf, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1956… Were some of the diaries stacked in the wrong order?  No, they continued to run in sequence:  1957, 1958…   She looked again.  1952 to 1955 were missing.

Hilary looked at her watch:  4.30.  Her shift at the pub started at six and she needed a bath and something to eat.  Margaret had written diaries between 1952 and 1955, hadn’t she?  Hilary had been looking at the spines of these diaries in the bookcase for twenty-one years and couldn't remember any gaps.  She opened the last page of 1951. “Did Berlioz’s “Shepherd’s Farewell” in Matins.  Coffee afterwards, to say goodbye to Brian Grey.  He and his boring twenty minute sermons are to become vicar of St George’s, Little Thornton.  New curate starts in March.  From Ireland and an Oxford graduate.  Must be better than Mr Grey!”