nine cards in it.
She read all nine. Sam has since found that out from his aunt, who Adele told in 1996.
And then she put them back in the order she found them, put the lid on, and put the box back in the wardrobe.
And she said nothing to her husband about it for twenty-seven years.
Twenty-seven years of birthdays, Christmases, a son’s graduation, a hip replacement, two redundancies and a caravan, and every single year another envelope going into a box in a wardrobe she knew the exact position of.
She died in the November of 2021. Pancreatic, like him, which Sam says is a coincidence and which the consultants say is a coincidence and which I still find difficult to hold.
And about a fortnight before she died she asked her son to come and sit down, and she gave him a name, and a phone
