What were the last words Lorraine said to me?

I finished the book this afternoon. Two chapters, straight through, because I was not sure of another Tuesday. She did not open her eyes. At the very end, when I had shut it, her hand moved on the blanket and I took it, and she said, quite clearly, "Is it Thursday?" I said it was. She said, "Then you ought to be sorting."

That was all. I sat until the light went.

I am writing it down tonight, exactly, because I think it is the last thing she will say to me, and it was a joke.

Annette telephoned at ten past six. Lorraine died at half past four this morning, in the front room, with Hal and Annette and Vivian there. She was sixty-nine.

I had been awake since four. I do not attach anything to that; I am often awake at four.

R. came down and found me at the kitchen table and did not say anything. He put his hand on the back of my neck and left it there. Then he fed the starter, hers, because it is Saturday and I had not moved.

Thirty-seven years. We met at a district meeting in September 1986, in a room with no windows, when she leaned over during a presentation on the new overdue policy and whispered a remark about the presenter.