And the reason I did not do it on the day is that coming off his care meant saying out loud, to a sister on a ward, that there was something between me and that man.
And on the eleventh of February there was not, yet, and saying it would have made it a thing.
So I left it eleven days, and then another seven, and then I married him and there was no leaving it any more.
Nobody has ever raised it with me. The ward knew by the end of February and everybody was lovely about it and it was handled.
And the forty tellings, which began before he was in the ground.
He died on the nineteenth of April and the funeral was on the twenty-fifth.
And I told it at the funeral. Twice. To his cousin and to a man from the club, standing in a function room with a cup of tea.
