In January, a retired couple from Chelmsford made an offer for Hilary's house, and, having already sold their own property, they wanted to move in as quickly as possible.  Frank and Dorrie now “cleared out”, giving Margaret's clothes to Oxfam, her gramophone records to Mrs Phillips, and her piano to St Catherine's Church, where Hugh Fearnley, who had a grand at Merrills School, tolerated it.  Bit by bit, Hilary's life in Water Langley was being dismantled.  She started applying for jobs in London

One evening, Amy rang Hilary in floods of tears: Amy and Phil had split up and Hilary would no longer be able to be a bridesmaid.  “We were always arguing,” Amy sobbed.  “Bet you and Andy don’t argue.”

“No-o,” Hilary replied.  They didn’t argue.  The second part of the Christmas holiday had been fine, but, since Andy had returned to St Luke's after Christmas, he had gone almost incommunicado, immersed in his medicine.  She wasn’t able to phone him (because of the St Luke's phone) and his letters had become shorter and less and less frequent.

Hilary was invited to an interview at Great Peter Street Library in Westminster.  Hilary's tutor at Chenham University was very impressed, and, also, the pay (by librarians’ standards) wasn’t bad.  Great Peter Street Library was behind Westminster Abbey and close to Church House, a big public library with white stone porticos, frequented by politicians, churchmen and civil servants.  Overawed and overwhelmed, Hilary, in her best interview clothes, did not expect to be successful, as it was only her first interview.  But she did get the job.

She returned to Chenham University, for the last two weeks of her course and exams.  She was just returning home from her first exam on Tuesday and was contemplating revising for the next two, when Dorrie rang.  “We need the Herald,” she said.  “You’re not going to need it in London and Beverley was in an accident yesterday.  She needs a car to drive her children to school.”  Beverley was Dorrie’s daughter.

“OK,” said Hilary.  She had grown rather used to having her mother’s Triumph Herald at her disposal, but she did accept that she would have to give it up once she moved to London.

“We’ll be along to collect it this evening.”

“Dorrie, I've got two more exams this week!  I need it to drive to the university.”

“But Beverley has to drive her children to school,” said Dorrie.

There followed a long and angry argument, taking up the time and emotional energy which Hilary needed to revise that evening.  At last, Dorrie conceded that Hilary could keep the car until her last exam on Friday afternoon, and Beverley would take it after that.  (Three months later, she would write off Margaret's little Triumph Herald in another accident, but, as Dorrie would say, Beverley herself was all right, and so were the children.)

As the sale of Hilary's house was to be completed the following week, Hilary had asked Andy to come to Water Langley to help her move her things.  As she got off the bus in Water Langley that evening, she felt happy, even if she did no longer have a car.  The clocks having gone forward the previous weekend, Water Langley was bathed in warm spring sunshine and, tonight, she would see Andy, for the first time for several weeks, in Water Langley, where he could be “her” Andy again.  He always had so much work to do these days.  Humming to herself, she prepared pizzas and salad, but, by eight o'clock, when he still hadn't arrived, she cursed British Rail and put hers into the oven.  She had just got it on to her plate when the telephone rang.  “Hello,” said Andy.  “Where are you?”

“At home.  Obviously.”

“Look, Hil, I'm still in London.  I think I'll wait and set off tomorrow.”

“Oh, for Goodness sake, Andy!” she retorted.  “We’ll have no time together at all this weekend!”

“Well, I did say this was not a good weekend for me.  I've got these practicals to write up and… Robert had his appointment at the Maudsley on Tuesday.”

“You’ve always got work to do.  You’ve had work to do all bloody term.”

“I'll be with you tomorrow.”

“Yes, you will,” she replied. 

“Don’t be like that.  I can't deal with this aggro right now.  I've got so much to do and I had to go with Robert to his appointment.”

“I don’t see how Robert’s appointment on Tuesday stops you coming to see me on Friday!”

“Don’t you?  Robert’s autistic.  Do you realise that?”

Hilary was shocked.  “Robert?  Autistic?  Oh, Andy, No!”

“Are you the expert?  Do you know better than a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley?  Now, I've got to do work and I'm on a payphone.  See you tomorrow.”

She returned to the kitchen and ate by herself, staring at what should have been Andy's pizza, still in its garish red and yellow packet.  Autistic?  What was autism?  She didn’t know.  One of her friends at school had had an autistic brother, who had been sent away to a “home”, so Hilary had never met him, but she thought she remembered her friend saying her brother couldn't speak and was “in a world of his own”.  But Robert wasn’t like that.  Robert was different, of course, the pale-faced child with mottled pink knees, standing on the edge of the village school playground, sucking his thumb as he watched the other boys (including Andy) play football.  She could understand why Andy was upset, but why hadn't he told her before?  Why hadn't he told on Tuesday, the day of Robert’s appointment?  In fact, he hadn't even told her that Robert had an appointment.

The following morning, Hilary put the last few remnants of her – very happy –childhood in Water Langley into packing cases.  She couldn't wait to get out of this house now.  She looked out of her bedroom window, for what might be the last time.  Caroline's Mini was in the Bryants’ drive again, and she did have time to pop over this morning, but… she just couldn't do it.

Andy arrived earlier than Hilary had expected, as she was eating lunch.  He was even thinner than he had been at Christmas, his eyes sunken into their sockets, his face grey, his lips compressed into a thin, miserable line.  “Do you want lunch?” she asked, as they walked back into the kitchen.

“No,” he replied.  “No, thank you.”

“Do you want a drink?”

“No, Hilary!” he retorted.

Wincing at being called by her full name, she sat down again at the kitchen table.  “Well, I'm going to eat mine.”

“Fine.”  He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.  “We can't carry on like this.”

“I'm sorry, Andy, for last night.  I really am.”

“I can't cope with it at the moment, Hil.  I really can't.  And I don’t think you can, either.”  He fixed his sunken, grey eyes upon her.  “We’re not doing each other any good.”

She raised her eyebrows.  “What?”

“Don’t make this any more difficult for me than it already is, please!  I really think… we should finish.”

“No, Andy, no!”  The bread and cheese she had just swallowed wedged in her throat, yet, at the same time, nausea overwhelmed her.  The table heaved and her chair melted away underneath her.

“We’ve been together three years.  We’ve had some good times, but our relationship has worn itself out, Hil.  We have to move on.”

“No… no.  I love you, Andy.”

He didn’t reply, “I love you.”  He went on, “I'm sorry, Hil.  I just can't go on like this.  It’s just all too much.  Everything’s too much.  I'm not sure I'm capable of loving anybody at the moment.”

“No… No.”

The telephone rang but Hilary just let it ring and ring into the empty house.

He stood up.  “Let’s move your stuff.”

They put the packing cases into Constance’s car, drove across the village and unloaded them into the Newtons’ garage, the idea being that Alice would pick them up the following weekend.  Constance and John came out to help them and made pleasant conversation, but Hilary was only vaguely aware of them being there.  Why?  And so suddenly?  Why?  He drove back to her house.  “Are you coming in?” she asked.  She still couldn't believe it.  Even now, she thought she would wake up from her nightmare.

“No,” he replied, in a small voice.

It was raining, bucketing down, and today the light was fading in the middle of the afternoon. 

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

She shrugged.  “I don’t know.”  She had intended to spend the weekend with him. 

“How have your exams gone?”

She told him, just to keep him there, but this conversation soon dried and they were sitting in silence, watching the rain pour down the windscreen. 

“Hil, I've got to go.”

She opened the car door just a little.  The rain beat against the panelling like little hammers.  “So this is it?” she said.  She had a sense of not really being there, of looking down at herself, of watching a tragedy on stage.

He stared straight ahead, at the rain on the windscreen.

She opened the car door a bit more.  With an awkward, jerky movement, she reached back inside the car and kissed him.   The she climbed out the car and he drove off.  She dragged herself to the front door, the cold, biting wind whipping the rain into her face.  As she walked inside this dreadful shell of a home, the telephone was ringing again and, once more, she let it ring and ring. 

Lunch was still on the table, lunch which she had started eating with a light heart, looking forward to their weekend together.  Now she cleared it away, wiping the kitchen table twice, three times.  She went into the living room, which had once been the hub of her family life, and hurled herself on to the settee, howling with grief.  She had no one now.  Her mother, gone!  Her grandmother in Australia, having lost one daughter, was now clinging on to her other daughter, Barbara, who, having complained when there was nothing to complain about for years, was now undergoing every kind of cancer treatment.  Her father, to whom she had never been close - although she had tried, so hard, to comfort him after Margaret's death - preferred to run straight into the arms of another wife.  Now Andy!    

“Oh God, oh God!” she cried to the deserted house.  “I can't go on!”  But she knew she would.  She would have to.

She got up and paced about downstairs.  In the dining room, the bookcase remained, an empty shell, all Margaret's secrets stowed in the safety of her girlhood bedroom in Mrs Rayner’s house, all Bill’s flyleaf inscriptions, in his spidery hand and bright blue ink.  “Sorry.  So terribly sorry, for loving you too much,” he had written inside one book, Hilary recalled, and, now she realised he had written these words as the relationship had ended.  She thought of her mother overwhelmed with hurt and anger.  Margaret, of course, would have prayed.  Margaret had had so much faith.  Hilary sunk to her knees, on the worn carpet.  “For with God, nothing shall be impossible,” was a favourite of her mother’s sayings, but, “Can you really sort out this one, Lord?” Hilary prayed.  “I am all alone.  I have no one in my life.”  God offered her expiation of her sins, but no friends or family for the remaining fifty or sixty years she would remain on earth.  “Yes, OK, Lord, you gave us another Comforter, the Holy Spirit, but I need a real person.  Oh Lord, oh Lord…” 

The house was so very empty.  Throughout the last few months, which she had spent alone in the house, she had continued to hear all the old sounds: Frank’s television, Frank setting down his tea cup on the coffee table, Margaret opening the piano lid, Margaret filling the kettle from the sink.  But, now, even these deserted her.

At last, scruffy and bedraggled, wet with rain and tears, she decided to take a bath.  In the recesses of her shock-befuddled mind, she recalled an anthem the choir had used to sing, something about “…Washing away all tears.”