‘You didn’t have to. I would have done it whether you wanted me to or not.’
‘So stop boasting, then.’
‘Huh?’
She was smiling. And then she said in words suffused with a warmth I hadn’t heard for months, as if the splinter of ice in her heart had finally melted, ‘Oh, Louie, I’ve missed you.’
She lurched forward into my arms. I grabbed her as one catches a child about to run into the road, and hugged her.
‘Oh, I’ve missed you so much,’ she said. ‘Even when I was sick and far away I knew I was missing you, even then. I just felt it. I can’t explain how . . .’ She broke free of my embrace and brought her face up close, inches from mine, as she tried to explain with a strange urgency. ‘I don’t know how, but it’s like being in a deep dream and yet still knowing . . .’
‘It’s OK, it doesn’t matter.’
She considered for a second and smiled. ‘No, I s’pose not. You’re here now. Just stop chasing the nurses, OK?’
‘I’ll do my best but it’s not easy when they look like Tadpole.’
She giggled. ‘Where’s my present?’
‘It’s on order.’
‘What is it?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that. It would ruin the surprise.’
‘But you don’t know what I want.’
‘All right, what do you want?’
‘A white Christmas.’
‘That’s what I ordered.’ She grinned and let her head sink back onto my chest.
In the corridor on my way out I ran into Miss Evangeline, the blind woman who had visited Myfanwy’s room the last time I was here. She had been waiting for me.
‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I want to show you something.’
She ambled along the corridor, feeling the wall gently with her hand. She took me to a small bedroom and bade me sit on the bed. The room was bare, almost monastic. I suppose if you are blind you don’t need to put much up in the way of decoration. She opened the drawer of a bedside cabinet, took out some photos and held them out to me. They were pictures of her thirty years ago as Borth Carnival Queen. She sat regally aboard a float, surrounded by lesser members of the royal household: carnival princesses, I guessed; along with courtiers and ladies in waiting. She wore a one-piece swimming costume with a satin sash across her chest. On her head sat a tiara and in her hand was a sceptre. Her face was gentle and heart-shaped, almost overwhelmed by the beehive hair-do and severe kohl-rimmed eyes that mimicked Dusty Springfield. On her face that bright look of expectancy, the one we wear in our teens on the threshold of life, the look full of latency, the one that pierces us when we see it years later in a snap at the back of a drawer. She had been a good-looking kid and I presumed that was what she wanted to hear.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was desired once. Ooh! Did you hear that?’ She grabbed my arm and became still. We listened, Miss Evangeline’s hand resting on mine. The bandages on her hands were fresh. Two safety pins glistened.
‘How did you hurt your hands?’
‘My hands? Oh yes. I can’t remember. It’s so long ago.’
‘Aren’t they getting better?’
‘The doctors say so, but what do they know? Listen!’
‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘It was the horse. In the paddock, do you hear? I often hear her whinny. She’s got a foal. Listen. There it is again.’
‘You’ve got sharper ears than me.’
‘I’m not making it up, if that’s what you think.’
‘Of course not.’
‘People say I make things up.’
‘Oh! I heard it that time.’
‘One day that little foal will be a mare with a foal of her own. I had a child once but they took it away. I wonder if she ever thinks of me? Do you think she does?’
‘I’m sure she does.’
‘Now you’re making things up. She probably doesn’t even know about me. She was too young to remember. It was different in those days . . . What if they never told her about me? She would never know. Oh, there she goes again. She loves her foal, doesn’t she?’
‘I never met a mare that didn’t.’
‘One day they’ll both be boiled up for glue. The glue will stick the boards of my coffin. And they’ll plant me in the garden so the worms can eat me, and shit me out to fertilise the soil, and make the grass grow. And the foal will eat the grass and all that will be left of Miss Evangeline is a whinny. Do you ever think of things like that, Mr Knight?
‘Yes, very often.’
‘You should. None of us have very long.’ The distant, dreamy expression on her face clouded with a vagrant urgency. ‘Promise me something, Mr Knight. Will you do that?’
‘Only if you stop calling me Mr Knight.’
‘Louie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t let Myfanwy go. Whatever she says, don’t take any notice. She’s a silly goose sometimes. Do you promise?’
‘I promise.’
She fumbled for my hand, and squeezed it. ‘I think it’s time. Do you know the bench outside the gate that overlooks the town?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you walk me to it?
‘Of course.’
‘I go every day. I’ve got a friend. But she’s not allowed in here.’
We walked down the path to the bench. Miss Evangeline’s friend was already there, waiting, sitting with her back to us, looking out at the prospect of Cardigan Bay. It was Lorelei, the one-eyed streetwalker. She allowed the thick powder on her face to crack in a thin smile of recognition when she saw me; a look of understanding passed between us, the look shared by two people who have spent too many hours of their lives walking the Prom late at night. She had take-away tea in Styrofoam cups and placed them on the bench between us.
‘I’m sorry there’s not one for you,’ she said. And Miss Evangeline said, ‘He can have some of mine. Don’t forget the . . .’
Lorelei took a quarter-bottle of spirits from her bag and fortified the tea. We drank a toast to the new year.
‘Me and Lorelei went to school together,’ said Miss Evangeline. ‘Sometimes we just sit here and don’t say a word.’
I left them to their tea and silent communion, went down the steps that led to North Road, and headed for my own personal confessor. Sospan. He was still there, leaning over an empty counter, staring out to sea.
‘Not closing early for Christmas?’ I said.
‘You should know me better than to ask that.’
‘No one would hold it against you if you did.’
‘Does the wolf take Christmas off?’
‘Not as far as I am aware.’
‘So how, then, can the shepherd?’
