William Penhaligon of Number 22 had not opened his curtains in three years. He preferred the house dim. Dim meant peaceful, quiet, manageable. Dim meant he didn’t have to see the rosebushes that had grown wild without June’s neat hands to clip them back.
He hadn’t meant to vanish from the neighbourhood. He just… drifted away. Covid restrictions arrived, and where others felt their world shrink, William felt an odd sort of relief. No need to pop into the shops. No obligations. Delivery vans brought him tins and teabags, socks and screwdrivers, all without him having to cross the doorstep.
And once the world opened again … well, he simply didn’t.
Still, turning seventy felt like it ought to mean something. He acknowledged it by making himself a slightly more luxurious breakfast: an extra sausage. He ate it alone, in silence, then put the plate in the sink and closed the kitchen door.
The day passed uneventfully.
It was sometime after midnight when the knocking began.
Soft, polite tapping, knock-knock-knock, coming from his bedroom window. This was alarming because his bedroom was on the first floor, and even the milkman couldn’t reach that height.
William sat up, heart thudding.
Another knock. Then a voice, prim and mild:
“Mr. William Penhaligon? Your file has reached the top of our queue.”
On the windowsill, cross-legged as if it were the most natural seat in the world, perched a man of indeterminate age. He wore a rumpled grey suit, biro tucked behind one ear and held a clipboard that seemed to be made of smoke and old letters.
“Who who are you?” William stammered.
The stranger gave a neat bow of the head.
“Caseworker Broome, Department of Turning the Page. Very backed up we were, after the pandemic. Thousands of people stuck. Regrettably, you’ve been pending for some time.”
William blinked several times. “This is a dream.”
Broome consulted his clipboard. “You’re welcome to believe that sir, but I’m required to proceed regardless. Now, according to Section 14B, you’ve been ‘stalled in unresolved grief’ for ….let’s see ….” He turned a page, “ one thousand and ninety-five days. You’ve remained on the same metaphorical page for almost exactly three years. Regulations oblige us to help you turn it.”
“I don’t want to turn anything,” William muttered.
Broome gave a sympathetic sigh; the sort people give when they’ve seen many cases like yours.
“Most people say that at first. Shall we begin?”
“Odd” Thought William “… why is he speaking in Bold Text?” he could see the worlds quite clearly nice neat and bold black text. He shook his head but before he could protest, the room dissolved, not with a jolt, but like the gentle unravelling of a daydream. When it came back into focus, they were standing in his living room.
But it wasn’t the living room as it was now.
It was how it had been.
June’s yarn basket by the hearth.
The framed print of Dunluce castle, she’d insisted on hanging slightly crooked.
And her armchair, angled toward his, with the faint depression of her body still in the cushion.
William reached out, a reflex, but as his fingers brushed the chair, it crumbled into soft grey mist and vanished.
Broome made a mark on his clipboard. “Very good. Acknowledgement achieved.”
“What are you doing?” William whispered.
“We don’t erase,” Broome said gently. “We release. Big difference.”
He led William through another shifting of air and memory, into the kitchen. On the fridge was the last shopping list June had written:
tea, porridge oats, marmalade, and something nice for pudding.
He had never taken it down.
His throat tightened. “Please don’t…….”
But Broome only touched a corner of the paper. It lifted, curled into vapour, and dissolved.
Another note on the clipboard. “Excellent. One more.”
The world tilted again, and they stood before the hallway mirror. The reflection staring back at William was almost a stranger, pale, withdrawn, older than he remembered being.
Broome reached inside his smoky clipboard and pulled out something solid: a birthday card. A real one, warm to the touch, with a faded blue envelope.
“I thought I’d lost that,” William murmured.
“You did,” Broome said softly. “People often lose the things they most need to find.”
William opened it.
Inside was June’s handwriting rounded, neat, familiar:
“Bill,
Promise me we’ll keep turning pages.
Love always, J.”
His breath hitched. The words blurred. He pressed the card to his chest.
Broome cleared his throat.
“This is the final item in your file. Acceptance triggers release. Once you’re ready… the page turns.”
William closed his eyes. For the first time in years, he let the grief move, not crush, not drown, but move. And something inside him, something that had been held tightly shut, loosened.
When he opened his eyes, Broome was stepping back onto the windowsill.
“Our work here is done. You’re cleared for resumption of life. Try the outdoors sometime, it’s still there you know”
“Will I see you again?” William asked.
Broome smiled kindly.
“Not if all goes well.”
With a faint whfff of displaced air, he was gone.
The next morning sunlight pushed through the curtains and, unusually, William let it. He rose, dressed, and descended the stairs, each motion a little stiff from disuse.
He opened the front door.
Cool morning air washed over him, smelling of damp hedges and someone’s burnt toast. The Close was waking birds, bins, children, all of it.
As he stepped onto the drive, Michael from number 24 straightened up from inspecting his bin.
“Well I’ll be,” Michael said, grinning. “Morning, William! Haven’t seen you in a bit.”
William found himself smiling back.
“Feels like time to turn a page.”
A line from an old song rose up in him, unbidden but welcome—the song he and June had danced to in the Stand Hotel in Portstewart in 1974:
These pages were meant for turning…
At the end of the Close, the kids from number 16 were chalking a hopscotch grid, arguing loudly about who got to draw the star in square nine.
One of them spotted him. “Morning, Mister Penhaligon!”
“Morning,” he said, surprising himself at how natural it felt.
The little girl with the plaits pointed at the hopscotch. “Want a go?”
William chuckled. “Maybe in a minute.”
He kept walking, down Nether Oak Close, past the hedges and the parked cars and the rising day.
And though he couldn’t quite name the feeling, it was something like beginning again.