an envelope he was never going to post, because he thought it would be disloyal.
He died on the Saturday at about twenty past six in the morning. Sam was on one side and I was on the other and neither of us was asleep.
And the Friday, which is the day I will keep.
He was clearer on the Friday than he had been since I arrived. The nurse said that happens and told me not to read anything into it, kindly, in the corridor, which I appreciated and ignored.
We did the bakery. We did Mr Ivor. We did a list of every teacher who had ever thrown a board rubber.
And at about four in the afternoon he said: “Ask me something you’ve wanted to ask for forty years. One. You get one.”
And I had about nine hundred and I picked the stupidest.
I asked him
