If he had the strength, he would get Erik to drive him down to that graveyard in Wicklow, just to visit Sorelli one last time. But he knows that if he did then by the time they got there he'd be too stiff to get out of the car, and what would be the point?

So he doesn't ask, doesn't even mention it though he knows Erik has been in his own right, but on the eve of Philippe's seventy-eighth anniversary, he raises a glass to her and her memory, watches the firelight flicker over her framed photograph, and that will have to do.

"There's not a day goes by that I don't miss you," he whispers, "but it won't be long now, I promise."

Christine stayed several days, after her mother's funeral. They went for a few walks, visited the respective new graves, and she was there as he buried the lock of Sorelli's hair at the stone bearing Philippe's name, took the old violin he's always kept for her and played it (a ceremony of their own making, and he thinks Sorelli would have liked it), but mostly they talked. Talked of the past, and pieces of her future, and it was all that they could be for each other, someone to talk to, but it was enough.

When she left, the loneliness that settled in her place was almost more than he could stand.

If not for Harry phoning twice a week, and coming down from Belfast every Saturday of that first year, he might have gone mad. But Harry kept him on the straight and narrow, made sure he was eating and looking after himself, and he grumbled a bit because he knew that would keep Harry happy, but he appreciated it more than words could say.

Appreciated it even when he hadn't the energy to enjoy it.

The hours were long after Harry left, the days long when he didn't ring, and the quiet in the house was enough that his own thoughts were deafening.

Every time his phone rang, he expected to hear her voice on the other end of the line.

There were only so many times he could go for a walk before the thought of going for a walk made him want to lie down and sleep.

It was almost peaceful, the times he could forget that she was dead. But the remembering—

The remembering—

The remembering was like having a piece cut out from him every time.

Why would Christine come back in time now, without Sorelli to draw her?

What could this past hold for her, when she had Erik in her present?

What did he have left, except memories and graves?

He would have gone back to Trinity, but he'd been replaced by a young lady lecturer, and it would be wrong of him to insist on his returning and replacing her, however appealing working himself into another (possibly fatal) heart attack might sound.

He passed his two remaining PhD students onto that girl, and wished her well.

It wouldn't have been right to keep working with them, when he couldn't give their work proper attention, when the very thought of it made him want to close his eyes to the world.

Besides, he was too old to go looking for a position anywhere else.

Noël's documentary on Connemara was on at the end of May, and as soon as he heard when it would be he reached for the phone to call Sorelli and invite her to join him so they could watch it together.

Then he remembered she was dead, and it was all he could do to breathe.

How could Sorelli be dead?

How could she have just died like that? So quietly, so quickly?

He woke up one morning at three a.m., and he couldn't remember what he'd dreamt but there were tears damp on his cheeks.

He didn't sleep again that night.

"I think you should come stay with us in Belfast for a while." Harry's mouth was a thin line, his brow furrowed. "Even just for a few days."

Raoul plastered on a smile and shook his head. "I'm fine, really. Just tired."

What he wouldn't give just to see her sneer about something ridiculous in the newspaper, one more time. Just to see her throw it aside, and insist she needed to write a letter to the editor.

On a grey morning in June, he went out and bought a box of cigarettes.

She'd be furious if she thought he was smoking, but if he was on the receiving end of that fury one more time he'd treasure it just for her to hug him afterwards, for her to look him in the eye and say, "You know I'm only worried for your health".

In the end he only smoked two out of the box. They were enough to make him want to vomit, his chest tight, and he burned the rest of the box.

He made sure to have shaved every time before Harry arrived, and to be sure the house was tidy. And he always made sure to plaster on some sort of a smile, no matter who rang, so that he wouldn't sound too bad on the phone. It wouldn't do for anyone to worry about him.

What pulled him out of it, for a little while, was when they decided to interview him for a documentary about Sorelli. No one else knew her as well, and he had to be at his best for her. It wouldn't be right to be anything less.

He went out and bought a new suit, because his best suit was the one he had worn to the funerals, and he couldn't stand to wear it anymore, and it was too loose on him anyway, with the weight he'd lost. So, he went out and bought a new suit, tailored to his thinner frame, and it disguised some of the weight loss, and made him look a good deal better.

A nice navy. The black was making him look washed out.

He didn't get his hair trimmed, but he did comb it back, and shaved carefully to be sure he didn't miss any stubble or nick himself, and he was a little pale, but didn't look half bad.

And he gave a good account of her, too. Of her and Philippe, and how they would have married, and how he first knew her. About the war and her time in England as a nurse, and her return to the stage afterwards and how the stage became the screen. Anyone could tell about that, but only he could tell about how important she felt it was, to build up a profile as an actress and use that for other things, like when she joined the Post-Sanatorium League, and campaigned for Noël, and the scandal she caused when she came out against the Church during the Mother and Child Crisis, and how she carried that through all of her life, and her fury over the lack of urgency in dealing with AIDS was just the same as her fury from more than thirty years earlier.

How she was always there for him, every time he got himself into a mess.

How no man could ever have asked for a better friend and how he was always so endlessly proud of her.

They'd agreed, that if there was to be something made about her after her death, then he would be the one to reveal to the world about how she also loved women, but go into no more detail than that, and give the reason that she had not spoken about in her lifetime as being that speculation over her private life would draw too much attention away from the things that needed attention, like the marriage bar when that was still there, and AIDS and the terrible poverty and deprivation in different parts of the country, of the world, and whatever else she decided to draw attention to, in any given moment.

So he did, he spoke about it, and then led into how she gave most of her wealth away to different things, and how she never stopped being angry that homosexual acts remained a criminal offence. He did not mention himself, because that would have been to draw attention away from her, but when the documentary was screened, and the country heard that Sorelli had loved women too, it caused a minor scandal.

She would have loved it if she'd known she'd cause a scandal even after she died.

(He knows, now, that Christine hadn't known about Sorelli loving women until after she went back to May 1945 and they had their first kiss. He hadn't mentioned it, because he hadn't wanted to spoil anything for her, and though she'd watched the news coverage from when Sorelli died, she'd made it a point not to read much about her, or to watch most of the interviews, because when it came to Sorelli she wanted to go into the past knowing as little as possible. So there were hundreds of things she'd left unwatched and unread, to try and have some integrity in her trips back in time, and he was happy for her that that one thing was something she could discover in her own time.)

(After the documentary was shown, after the scandal died down, his outing Sorelli to the world was a piece of her history mostly left unspoken.)

It was Darius who pulled him out of himself properly. Darius, who flew back into the country again in September, and took one look at him and said, "You need a project."

"I'm too tired for a project."

"You're not tired, you're depressed. And you'll make yourself worse with that attitude. The things she'd say if she could see you now."

"Darius—"

"No. I'm not listening. Come on, you're coming out for a while."

Before he could protest, he'd been handed his coat and his scarf, and pushed out the door.

Darius dragged him back out into the sunlight, in every way, and it didn't ease the ache in his chest, didn't keep him from missing Sorelli, but it helped him to breathe around it, just enough that he could get his feet under him again.

Just enough that he could feel the sun on his face.

Darius insisted on playing music, refused to let him be in the house alone, insisted he eat three times a day and shave every morning and open the windows even when it was raining.

("You were always so particular about shaving and now is no time to stop.")

("You'll suffocate if you don't let the air in.")

("If you don't eat you'll be getting more suits tailored. I swear you're fading away.")

It was Darius who made him realise how lonely he'd been, and when Darius couldn't stay any longer, when he had to go back to London in mid-October, it was easier, then, to keep going. Easy to pretend there was still someone insisting he do these things.

After Darius left, Raoul finally went down to the house in Wicklow, and put everything in order, just the way Sorelli asked him to, in her written instructions.

Everything left to him, to someday leave it to Christine. Paper and letters marked with different dates for her to receive them, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years into the future and more.

Raoul resolved, then, that no matter what he would have to live long enough to do so.

Live long enough to meet that girl in her own time, all grown up.

For Sorelli, if for no one else.