as though everybody knows it — can pay for it in advance out of their own money, which Alwyn Creed had, because he had eleven thousand pounds in an account he had not touched since 2017.
I sat on my own stairs after that call for about half an hour.
Nine months. Four conversations with three different members of staff at that home, every one of them kind, every one of them busy, every one of them saying some version of don’t you worry about that, Alwyn.
Nobody rang Pauline. It took eleven minutes.
And the ring, which I did not find out about until Ruth Benedek handed me an envelope in the April.
There was something in his coat pocket in that day room. I saw his hand go to it and I assumed it was a handkerchief, because at eighty-nine it usually is.
It was Nancy’s ring. It had
