She didn’t turn round but she reached up her right hand to rest it on his. What a waste, what a stupid, pointless waste.’įrank Teasdale put his hands gently on his wife’s shoulders and kissed the back of her head lightly. ‘I wish I could,’ came the whispered reply. ‘What was it all for? Tell me that,’ she asked without turning. ‘It’s time, Jean,’ said her husband softly. A few moments later the sound of the hubbub downstairs increased as the door behind her was opened and then faded as it was closed again. She barely acknowledged the fact that a hearse was drawing up outside the house, its wheels silenced by the snow. There were no tears she had cried herself out.

Jean Teasdale’s face was expressionless, her eyes distant. Amy was going to start her last journey from her own room. She only knew that, as she continued to look out of the window, it seemed right. She didn’t know why she’d done it and she suspected the authorities had only given in to avoid a prolonged scene with a grief-stricken woman. But Amy’s mother had dug her heels in and insisted that she be allowed home for the last time. They were usually taken directly to the hospital mortuary to await collection by appointed undertakers on the day of the funeral. It was unusual for the bodies of patients who had undergone postmortem examination to leave the premises. The hospital had given special permission for this. She lay in the little white coffin in the middle of the room. Red birds would no longer fly off into green sunsets and Jack would not be slaying the giant again to childish sighs of relief. There would be no more brightly coloured pictures of jungle animals for her father to admire before telling her bedtime stories, no improbable pink giraffes or mauve tigers. Amy’s pyjamas lay on the pillow, neatly folded in a little square parcel her colouring books were stacked on a bedside table with a box of pencils on top but none of them would be needed again. The pink wallpaper, the Disney curtains, the toys, the dolls, the picture of the boy-band on the wall. Ostensibly everything about the room itself was the same as it always had been. There was a distant hubbub from the people waiting downstairs but that served only to accentuate the silence in a room that had so often been alive with childish laughter. The whole world seemed quiet it was holding its breath.

This was as it should be, thought the woman who stood there looking out.

There was no rattle of raindrops or hammering of hail. Outside, snow was falling from a white-grey sky and the view from the window was blurred as a slight breeze caught the flakes and threw them silently against the glass. Amy’s room was cold the heating had been turned off.

Donor by Ken McClure