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– or how difficult it would be to sell Jamie’s share of it. It had taken all this time to sort it out.
    Amy had survived by carrying on teaching, until Grace’s money had solved her problems. And now that she had sold the flat as well, things would be easier.She planned to settle in before buying somewhere, but at least she could think about buying a house in Suffolk. Although maybe she should have consolidated a bit, before taking the plunge to move and start a new career. She had enough to tide her over for the next few months, and supply-teaching at schools would help … but would it be enough?
    The thoughts swirled round in her head. Nights were always a bad time for Amy. The demons couldn’t be as easily dispatched as during the day. And the suffocating blackness of her new room, with its thick velvet curtains, didn’t help either. She was used to having a neon streetlight outside her window and found total darkness oppressive.
    She turned on the light. Grabbing a book usually helped – something light and funny, like Terry Pratchett, was a must. Gradually the feelings of panic subsided, and her heart stopped racing at a rate of knots. She read, and eventually fell asleep, head propped against her pillow, the light still on.

    Amy spent the morning unpacking. She felt as if she had been hit over the head with a brick. As usual after a bad night, her thoughts were muzzy and unfocused. She had managed to find Josh’s train set and set it up in the front room, along with snacks and a pile of DVDs, just to keep him occupied while she got on with trying to create some semblance of normality.
    She dug out a radio, which she switched on in thekitchen. It was pre-tuned to Radio 2. Amy had grown up thinking Radio 2 was the preserve of sad middle-aged people far removed from the cutting edge of life, until Jamie had made her listen to it one Saturday lunchtime. ‘Honestly, they play really good music on Radio 2,’ he had promised her. And to Amy’s surprise, he was right. Not only were the DJs highly entertaining, the music was great, and after that she and Jamie had often tuned in together. After he had died, she had listened to the radio obsessively – as if in some strange way it still linked them. She woke up to Wogan’s gentle warblings, and dipped in and out all day. Radio 2 was an essential part of her now – a soundtrack to her life, now she no longer had one.
    Sunday-morning love songs was on. Sometimes Amy found all the people ringing in with messages for their loved ones too painful for words, but of late she’d found it comforting to know that not everyone was as lonely as she was, and it was easy listening as she started shoving books onto shelves. As the room slowly got cleared up, and things began to fall into place, Amy started to feel better again, and she gradually felt that she was getting things under control.
    ‘And this is for Bev Peters, who’s away at uni, and missing her boyfriend Colin very much,’ Steve Wright was saying, before Amy heard the first haunting bars of a familiar tune.
    She paused in the middle of her new living room. She felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. That song – how many years ago was it? In the early days of their relationship, Amy had still been at teacher-trainingcollege, and they had spent a year apart. Jamie had compiled a tape of ‘their’ songs, which she had played endlessly, missing him so much it had hurt. Her favourite track on it had been ‘Forever Autumn’ – at the time it seemed to sum up the way she felt. How could she have known that her feelings then would be a pale shadow of the real thing – of what it was like knowing that she would never see Jamie again? The song could have been written for her, and seemed cruelly apposite now. It was all gone. Everything. The only good thing left was Josh. All the rest was dust.
    ‘Anyone home?’ There was a knock at the side door that led to the garden, and Amy pulled herself together.