When we were 19, my best friend and I promised that if we were both single at 60, we’d find each other — I turned 60 last Tuesday, and my old landline rang.

The 2008 one says: Sam’s off to college. You’d like him. He’s got your sense of humour, which is a strange thing for me to write down.

And the 2021 one, the year Adele died, says one line.

Not this year, Lornie. Not fair on her.

Even with the box in a wardrobe and his wife three weeks in the ground, that man would not put a soft sentence in 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.