They took his wife’s body on a Sunday afternoon, a few hours after she had died. The nurses helped him wash and change her before his young daughters came upstairs to see it.
The girls wriggled nervously in the stillness of her room. They crossed their chocolatey fingers and hid them behind their backs, they crossed their toes too, and they held their breaths.
They were less scared now than before: she couldn’t make creaking sounds or grip their hands too tight. She couldn’t cry in pain, so they no longer worried that they didn’t know how to help her.