She could have taken in a lodger, couldn’t she? It was the biggest mistake of her life and they were fools who had counselled her. Sell up, find yourself a room, purchase an annuity! How could she ever have let herself be influenced? Yet, of course, she hadn’t. She had chosen to forget that. She had nearly always made her own decisions. No, the truth was—after Marie had died she could hardly wait to get away from Marie’s flat. Every inch of it was a reminder. How many occasions had there been, even during the brief period of her needing to arrange things, when she’d imagined she had heard a call from Marie’s bedroom? That weak, beloved call? How many occasions when she had actually been on the point of hurrying in? Why, there was even one time, she remembered—unawares, she had been sitting at the piano—when she’d suddenly turned her head, fully expecting Marie to be about to walk into the room…and this despite the fact that Marie had been bedridden for the previous twelve months; dependent on a wheelchair for several years before.
