The evening had been wretched. He was surprised by the call from the upstairs landing, tentative, but warm.

"Timothy, could you give me a hand for a moment?"

They had sniped at each other with brittle irritabilities throughout dinner. Patrick had been on time collecting Timothy after the clinic, but he had been weary and distracted, asking questions yet neither hearing the answers nor responding to questions Timothy asked. It was only after they returned home that he remembered they should have stopped at the chip shop. He was too tired to go out again. Instead they had watery scrambled eggs; the dourness between them solidified with each scrape as food was pushed from one side of a plate to the other and every nagging reminder to practise for the violin exam and to write to Shelagh. Timothy clattered the dishes into the sink, washed them in hostile silence then retired to the sitting room, sawing his way up and down scales and stabbing at his pieces. Initially Patrick joined him with his writing pad and fountain pen, trying to wrestle words to Shelagh and finding they would not come when punctuated by endless repetitions of difficult phrases, clumsily bowed. Moving to the dining room, again he failed to get beyond the first paragraphs. When Timothy finished his practice, finding some writing paper ostentatiously left next to his violin case, his father was upstairs, whistling the Sailor's Hornpipe at a brutal pace which Timothy bitterly knew he would never be able to replicate.

Although the door of the spare room was open and its light on, Patrick was in his bedroom when Timothy wandered to the first floor. The wardrobe door hung open with a suit hanging from it. On the floor below were a small number of crumpled garments on the floor and a box of miscellaneous bits and pieces, mainly crumpled pieces of paper and empty cigarette packets. The bed was stripped and pushed into the middle of the room, two paintings which had been removed from the walls and a small mirror lying on top of it, while a bedside table and an armchair crouched nearby. Patrick was at the side of the room, edging his chest of drawers forward, inch by slow inch.

"What are you doing?" asked Timothy.

Patrick straightened up and puffed, pushing his fringe back from his face. "Trying to sort the room out for Mr. Warren, so he and his sons can get straight on with decorating it instead of wasting time on this."

"Aren't they coming on Thursday?"

"They are, but I might not have time after we get back from dinner with Sister Julienne tomorrow. I don't want anything to get broken or lost by rushing and this way I can clear out the rubbish and the things which aren't needed anymore as well," he said, gesturing towards the box of detritus. "Well done," he offered, gently. "Your pieces sounded much better by the end, Timothy, especially the minuet."

Timothy flicked a wan look at his father. While Patrick was speaking, he had scanned the room, feeling a cold choke bubble in his throat as he saw what was missing and deduced where it had gone. "What do you want a hand with?"

It hurt him that Timothy had not responded to the little compliment. Although he smiled as he explained, it was forced. "I need to move this into the middle of the room. Could you push against it while I pull it?"

"Alright," said Timothy, taking his place.

"Thank you. Don't hurt yourself. Just a little bit of a push."

The chest of drawers was old and sturdy, an heirloom from Patrick's parents. At first they strained and tensed, feeling the legs catch on the rims around flattened edges of carpet with resolute immobility. Timothy pursed his lips as he gripped the edges, responding to Patrick's breathy advice to 'be careful' only by pushing more. Then, suddenly, it gradually started to slide across the floor.

"It's moving, Dad!"

"Keep going. Almost there," Patrick grunted. "And, stop! There we go!" Now Timothy grinned a little at him, leaning over the top of chest of drawers.

"Why was it hard at first when it was OK at the end?"

"Because we had momentum. That means that when you've got started, it's quite easy to keep going, but it's hard to start in the first place. As the chest of drawers had been in that spot for a long time that made it particularly hard to get going. It's like what happens when you're riding your bike, especially if you're riding downhill and you get faster and faster. Do you see what I mean?"

Timothy nodded. "Is that why things can't stop sometimes?"

"Yes. The momentum takes over."

With a final nudge, Patrick pushed the chest of drawers against the bed. Apart from the wardrobe, fitted against the wall, all of the furniture sat huddled in the middle of the floor. The room seemed colder to Timothy as he looked at the uneven patches of colour on the wall and carpet, alien and so much bigger. "When the painting's done are you going to put it back the way it was before? I mean, the way it was before, before," he added, uncomfortably.

Patrick folded his lips for a moment before replying. "I'm not sure. Shelagh ought to decide really. And it will depend on whether we can get the thingummygig for her on Saturday and what size it is. Rooms often look different when they're painted too." From out of his back pocket he pulled a folded piece of wallpaper with three small samples of paint upon it and offered it to Timothy. "Could you help me with something else? I need some advice. I need to pick a paint colour. Shelagh said in her letter this morning she'd like the room a pale yellow so Mr. Warren gave me these three choices. Which one do you like?"

Timothy shrugged, inaudibly mumbling.

"Please, Timothy," Patrick inveigled with false cheerfulness. "What do you think? They all look the same to me - I don't have the eye for colours you have. That definitely came from Mum."

Ignoring the shard of the last sentence, Timothy reluctantly took the paper; it minutely shook in his hand and the shades swirled. Placing it on the top of chest, he folded his arms in front of it, leaning his chin where the wrists crossed, his eyes down. Within his mouth, he bite the inside of his lip.

"Timothy?" There was no response; the head was curled down, however Patrick could see the eyebrows contract. "Timothy, what is it?"

Even after Timothy looked up, he did not immediately reply. Once and for a long time this room had shattered him. But still he had been drawn to it, waiting until his father was away on calls so he could secretly invade it. Then suddenly it had altered months later. Things were removed, others changed. Although it was never explained, he knew he had never been alone in his sickness. He took a peculiar comfort from this and his healing slowly began; a scab started to form. Now he saw it changing again. All things were changing. Things disappeared which would never come back and he no longer knew if only he cared or saw they had gone. With this the scab was shredded, leaving a wound freshly seeping. He swallowed and paused, frightened of what the answer might be if he asked the question. "Dad, are you still sad that Mummy died?"

Patrick stared in total incomprehension. "What?" The sound was hardly formed enough to be a word.

"Are you still sad about it? That Mummy died?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Properly sad?"

"Of course. How could you think that I wouldn't be?"

Timothy persevered. "Even though if she hadn't died, you wouldn't be able to marry Shelagh?"

Which of them was paler, from fear or shock, was unclear. Patrick's voice was not recognisable when he spoke. "Do you really think that? Have you been thinking about this for a while?"

"No," said Timothy, very softly. His voice was uneven and his face rippled. "But – " He shrugged again and looked into the polished surface where his arms were folded.

The old armchair which Patrick nightly threw his clothes upon and sat in to pull on his socks and shoes each morning had been facing the bed. He turned it around towards them. "Sit down." Timothy seemed tiny crouched in the chair, trapped between the worn headrests. His hands were under his knees, the knuckles folded over the fraying upholstery, a cornered animal.

With nowhere else to sit, Patrick sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him. That day had plundered all of his experience in a series of hideous consultations. He had painstakingly explained to the Higgins parents the hopelessness of Gracie's test results until the mother wailed in agony; there was Mrs. Tate, rapidly disintegrating, clinging to hope of the impossible miracle while the bleeding cough tore through her; finally a blithe expectant mother at the clinic where no flutters of life could now be found, destroyed by his news. Each had crushed his empathy and compassion until only the last flickers were left. Now he mined these dwindling reserves, as father, not doctor, laying out the truth before him in all its intricate complexity.

"Timothy, Mum's illness and her death will always be among the very saddest moments in my life. That will never change. I'm very happy about marrying Shelagh, however it's not because I don't still feel sad about Mum. It's definitely not because I've forgotten. I won't. I couldn't. You won't ever forget Mum, will you?"

"No," said a little voice.

"Good. I would hate it if you did." Hesitantly he reached out and placed a hand on the boy's knee, waiting in case it was shaken off before he continued. "I loved Mum very much, just like you. I thought you knew that."

"But what about Shelagh? What if Mum hadn't got ill?" What was the confusion in Timothy's voice, wondered Patrick. The idea that she was not loved enough or too much? The hugeness of the parallel life, its 'what might have been' so overwhelming? It was too easy and simplistic to say he would never have noticed her or that she would have just remained Sister Bernadette. He did not believe that now; regardless of whether they had only ever remained colleagues, she would not have seen his need had she not already been searching beyond the window.

"But she did, Timothy," he said simply. The child's face crumpled grotesquely. Patrick moved closer, hovering near his son. "I don't think it helps saying 'what if' this or that. When things happen, there's no point in wishing it wasn't like that, because it is like that. Sometimes I see horrible things at work, where good people develop terrible illnesses and can't be saved. Sometimes they're children, younger than you. Although it's awful, it just happens. It was the same with Mum. She didn't deserve it and neither do any of those people, but it did happen. What's the point of 'what if'?

"The really important thing is how we react and what we learn from what happens. It's not Mum or Shelagh, Timothy. If Mum hadn't died then we'd be different, wouldn't we? We've changed because of Mum, haven't we?" Timothy slowly nodded. "How have you changed?"

"I've learnt stuff," he faltered. "I've learnt all kinds of things since Mum died about being independent."

"Yes. You're incredibly independent, and when you have to do difficult things, you're able to deal with them. That's called being resilient. You're thoughtful about other people. You can even be patient – sometimes," he added, with the merest hint of teasing, watching for the slight quiver of amusement. "That's because of the last few years. And Mum would be so remarkably proud of you." The voice broke slightly.

"And I'm different too, I think: more grateful for things, a little more patient, I hope. I think I've had to learn to accept what I can't do. I'm not sure what, but I know that I'm different." A hand slid out from under the knee and the tips of two fingers wove into the fingers of Patrick's hand. "So if Mum hadn't been ill, I wouldn't have married Shelagh, no. But if it wasn't for Mum, and her illness, we wouldn't be who we are now and I don't think she'd have wanted to marry me anyway. The fact I want to marry Shelagh and she wants to marry me is because of all the things that make us the way we are, including all the happy times with Mum and then the time when she was ill and her dying. It includes Shelagh being a nun for so long and then being ill too. Do you understand?"

He started to nod. "Mum's sort of part of you getting married again."

"Yes. What happened to Mum is part of you and me and that means it's part of Shelagh too now."

Glossy light reflected in Timothy's eyes. Although he mumbled, his looked directly at his father. "If Mum's part of you getting married, why have you not got her picture anymore?"

Patrick closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were warm and his lips had settled into something close to calm. "Go and look in the spare room, Timothy. Go on."

Normally Timothy questioned any command he did not understand; now, seeing the urgency of his father's encouragement, he simply obeyed, hauling himself from the chair, slowly crossing the room and the landing to enter the spare room. The normal sterile neatness was brimming with life, in piles of belongings evacuated from Patrick's bedroom. His most frequently worn clothes lay on the bed, while a table was covered by the clutter that had previously lived on his bed-side table and the top of his chest of drawers. Hairbrush and comb, alarm clock, books, handkerchief, ashtray, matches and cigarettes, diary, and, laid flat at the side, a silver framed photograph.

Timothy picked it up. He had been only five when it was taken, yet he vaguely remembered the autumn sunshine during that holiday and how his mother's careful pose collapsed while his father fumbled with the dials. She called it 'his toy' and laughed the very second he took the picture. Instinctively he started to smile back at her.

"See?" Patrick was standing in the doorway of the room. "Not got rid of."

"You won't get rid of it, will you?" asked Timothy, perching on the edge of the bed, quickly looking up.

"No, of course not," said Patrick. "Shelagh and I talked about it and we thought we'd put that picture up in the sitting room. That way you'll see it more as well. I've meant to move it for a couple of weeks. It just kept slipping my mind."

"And you're not sorry about anything? Even though you're still sad that Mum died?"

Sitting down beside him, for a moment Patrick put his arm around Timothy's shoulder. "How could I be sorry when I was married to your mum and we had you?" He heard a little sigh of ease and rubbed the shoulder. "The only thing I ever feel sorry about is that I didn't marry Mum much earlier and we waited so long."

"Why didn't you?"

"The war," he replied.

Timothy frowned. "Why couldn't you? I don't understand. People get married during wars. Uncle David and Auntie Louisa did. So did Auntie Anna and Uncle Tom."

"I know," said Patrick, withdrawing the arm and running his hand around the back of his head. "We could have done. We talked about it. It was me who didn't want to." He wondered how to convey the horror without corrupting the dreaming imagination which made heroes of pilots and soldiers. "When Mum and I were growing up, there were two men who lived on our street who'd been in the first war and they never really left it behind. One of them had been very active and very good at sport – he'd hoped to be a professional footballer. However he was badly injured and although he came back, he was in a wheelchair and had only one arm. He was angry all the time because of the things he couldn't do and because of that his wife was very unhappy.

"The other man had a terrible time in one particular battle and later on in his life when he heard sudden loud noises, they sometimes reminded him of that battle. It didn't happen all the time, but it could be really ordinary things like his children shouting or a car backfiring and he'd become upset. Can you imagine what that would be like?"

Timothy nodded. "I think so. Really horrible."

"Yes," said Patrick. He could still see his father moan and gibber as he watched from the doorway. "Anyway, I didn't want to get married until the war was over in case I was injured as I didn't want Mum to go through what those men's wives did and have to spend the rest of her life taking care of me."

"She wouldn't have minded."

"I know. But I would."

From the corner of his eye he could see Timothy slightly turn and face him before the next question was asked, very quietly. "Did you mind taking care of her when she was sick?"

Patrick blinked and looked up at the ceiling until he could control his voice. "No, never." He paused and exhaled, then began again. "It was a privilege. I know that now: it's special to be allowed to take care of a person in that way. See? That's another one of the other things I've learnt because of Mum's illness which changed me."

"Is that why you want to get married quickly this time? Because you wish you'd not waited with Mum?"

"Yes."

They sat in stillness, one still holding the photograph, the other staring at his shoes. "I like the middle one," said Timothy eventually. Patrick turned to him, blankly. "The colours," he explained.

"The middle one?"

"Yes. It's nice and bright, but it's not really really bright. I think Shelagh'll like it."

"The middle one it is, then. Thank you." Rolling his shoulders, Patrick stood up, briefly touching Timothy's head before patting him on the shoulder.

"Can I help with something else?" asked Timothy eagerly, following Patrick out of the door and back to his bedroom.

"Not really. It's almost done."

"There's got to be something," he said stubbornly. "I could help you put them away," he offered, pointing at the small pile of clothes and box on the floor.

Patrick laughed. "No need. They're getting thrown out."

Timothy leant over and peered judiciously, before picking up one particularly elderly shirt from which blood and vomit stains could no longer be removed. "They're not very nice are they? They're quite tatty."

"Why have you suddenly got some fixation with my clothes? That's the third time you've complained about them in the past few days." said Patrick suspiciously. "Have you been talking to Auntie Louisa or something?"

"I've not talked to Auntie Louisa," said Timothy, carefully crafting his words into the truth. "You should get a nice suit for the wedding though."

Patrick raised an eyebrow. "I should, should I?" Timothy grinned. "I suppose you're going to recommend where I should get it from now."

"Maybe," said Timothy, putting his hands in his pocket. Patrick snorted, shaking his head, and piled the clothes into the box. "Isn't there anything I can help with? Can I sit and talk to you?"

"I'll be finished in five minutes."

"Can we please do something then? It's our very last Tuesday. And we've not got any Saturdays left now." He looked awkwardly at his father and handed over the old shirt. "I mean Tuesdays and Saturdays that will be just 'Us Two' times."

Although Patrick took the clothes, he looked at Timothy, not them. "Until Shelagh's on duty or visiting her friends or family or she wants to read a book or pray or just do something by herself or it's a time when we decide we just need a bit of 'man-to-man' time," he said lightly, beginning to laugh. "You don't really think we'll never have any 'Us Two' time again, do you?"

For a moment Timothy squirmed. His fears seemed incredibly silly now. "No, not really."

"No, not really," repeated Patrick. "You can't play chess with three people and I don't think Shelagh desperately wants to learn how to fish, do you?" he said. "In a few weeks you'll still be having lots of 'Us Two' time, except it will be with both of us in turn and I suspect you'll have so much fun with Shelagh, you'll be complaining that time with me is incredibly boring." Sheepishness spread over Timothy's face.

"Now, if you really want to be useful, can you get that suit hanging on the wardrobe door and stick it in the spare room? Then why don't you go and have your bath now, while I finish up here, and maybe you could give me little concert of your exam pieces or read me an interesting bit of your book or something before bedtime? Alright?" Watching Timothy bashfully curling his chin into chest was like watching him as a little boy: he wished he was not too old now to be cuddled, as he winked at him on the way out of the door.

The snap of the wardrobe door shutting echoed across the room, as Patrick looked back over it. At first he had loved it; large and roomy and light, his belongings on one side, Elizabeth's on the other. Then it had become infused with the long, slow scent of death, light draining from it as the air grew heavy. At last it tormented him - empty spaces, the cold void of the other side of the bed - until a day, months after her death, when he could no longer bear its constant reminders. He offered Elizabeth's furniture to Anna and David and Louisa, as useful keepsakes for their children of a woman they had loved, before moving everything that remained until each piece stood in strange and different places: the bed against a different wall, the chair by the window, not the wardrobe. Trying to reinvent the room, he only succeeded in reinforcing what had once been. The belongings left were debris of a life lost, swamped by space and absence.

It had mocked him then. Now the room was in limbo; incomplete, uncertain, yet awaiting recreation. Bright colour would clean and cover the fadedness, imbuing the walls with hope.

Switching off the light, he went to the spare room to collect the photograph and, just as Timothy had done, he looked down at it, remembering how she had laughed when he had taken it and shaken the newly short and curled hair. Two weeks earlier, for their eighth wedding anniversary, they had gone to see Roman Holiday and as they were walking home, she had announced her intention to have her hair cut like Audrey Hepburn's. 'Take me to Rome, Patrick' she whispered as she took his arm and they imagined speeding through ancient streets on a Vespa, seeing places they had read about and eating ice-cream in brilliant sunshine some day when they could afford it, perhaps their twenty-eighth anniversary, wondering if they could ever be so old. The Hepburn style had suited her; this holiday photograph the first record of it. He smiled as he recalled how she fidgeted with it in the first few weeks, whether it was neatly styled around her face or lying tousled against their pillows. Once or twice that holiday he had playfully called her 'Princess Anya' as he ran his fingers through it, until she said it felt as though he was making love to her sister and he promptly stopped, returning to the old, old nickname which only he used: Lizzie. It was not a diminutive, but a memory they winced at of when she had emulated her favourite heroine, denouncing him as rude and arrogant and ungentlemanly, a terrible snob who thought he was above everyone else in their street because he was now studying in London. With shock he had realised that the little girl, someone he had alternately shown off to or ignored for years, had grown up, seeing her anew and mending his manners until she forgave him a year later; then, later still, agreed to accompany him to his college dance.

For so long Elizabeth had laughed at him from the top of his chest of drawers, yet he had not fully looked at it for many, many months. Slowly, he knew the image had become an idealised shrine, the flaws and quirks which had truly made their life together forgotten and actual memories jangled into discordance. It was beloved, but no true reflection of who she had been, a focus in the room which burdened him with terrible heaviness until his lungs were rusted iron dragging him down like an anchor. Then, gradually, this year, he had felt the rust begin to slough away, each flake removed with buffeting, gradually lightening the weight until he could start to move. The lines and focus of the image behind of the photograph had sharpened once more and now he saw her again, as she was. And she was there, not only in the picture but in his mind and his memory, in Timothy. A derisive note in his laughter, his fierce concentration when drawing, something about the way he held his head when he asked a personal question, the surprising eruptions of his giggle. She was there. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Patrick gazed down at the image, no longer the instigation of grief or pain, but of tender gratitude for the happiness he had known. A film of dust had accumulated on the glass and he took his handkerchief to wipe away it away until it was clear; and, just as he done when first confronted with the fleeting expression he was attempting to capture with the camera, he laughed back.