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birds. Hanny loved the birds. I taught him all about them. How you could tell if a gull was in its first, second or third winter by the mottle of its plumage and the differences between the calls of the hawks and terns and warblers. How, if you were very still, you could sit by the water and the knots would move around you in a swarm so close that you could feel the breeze from their wings on your skin.
    I’d copy the cries of the curlews and the redshanks and the herring gulls for him, and we’d lie on our backs and watch the geese high up in a chevron and wonder what it would be like to part the air a mile above the earth with a beak as hard as bone.
    Hanny smiled and tapped the figures on the painting.
    ‘That’s you,’ I said. ‘That’s Hanny.’
    Hanny nodded and touched himself on the chest.
    ‘That’s me?’ I said, pointing to the smaller of the two and Hanny gripped my shoulder.
    ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ I said, and I meant it.
    Pinelands didn’t do him much good. They didn’t know him. They didn’t care for him like I did. They never asked him what he needed. He was just the big lad in the tv lounge with his paints and crayons.
    He held me close to his chest and stroked my hair. He was getting stronger. Every time I saw him he looked different. The puppy fat that had been there at Christmas had slipped from his face and he had no need to fake a moustache with a piece of burnt cork anymore like we used to do as children. It seemed unimaginable, but Hanny was becoming an adult.
    I think he sensed the strangeness of it too, albeit dimly. The way one might feel there was something different about a room but not be able to say what. Was there a missing picture, say, or a book shelved in a different place?
    Sometimes I caught him looking at the span of his hands, the nest of black hairs on his breastbone, his hard oval biceps, as though he couldn’t quite understand what he was doing inside this man’s body.
    ***
    As we had always done in the past, we left for Moorings at first light on the Tuesday of Holy Week.
    Once everyone had gathered at Saint Jude’s and stowed their bags on the minibus, Father Bernard went to get into the driver’s seat. But before he could start the engine, Mummer touched him on the arm.
    ‘Father Wilfred usually led us in prayer before we left,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said Father Bernard and he got down and started on the sign of the cross.
    ‘We tended to go around the corner, Father,’ said Mummer. ‘And pray with Our Lady.’
    ‘Oh, right,’ said Father Bernard. ‘Yes, of course.’
    We gathered at the foot of the little Alpine rockery on which the Virgin stood and bowed our heads as Father Bernard made an impromptu prayer of intercession, asking her for a safe journey and a successful pilgrimage. After the Amen, we took it in turns to go to the railings, lean forward and kiss Mary’s feet.
    Father Bernard made way for Mrs Belderboss, who lowered herself slowly to her knees and had Mr Belderboss hold her by the shoulders as she leant over. Once she had kissed the Holy Mother’s toes, she closed her eyes and began a whispered prayer that went on so long Father Bernard began to look at his watch.
    I was to be the last to go up, but Father Bernard said, ‘Leave it, Tonto. Otherwise we’ll be sitting on the North Circular all day.’
    He looked up at Mary with her expression of vacancy and grief. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind.’
    ‘If you say so, Father.’
    ‘I do,’ he said and jogged back to the minibus, making everyone laugh with a quip that I didn’t catch as he climbed up the steps to the driver’s seat.
    I hadn’t seen them all so happy for months. I knew what they were thinking. That this time it would be different. That Hanny would be cured. That they were on the cusp of a wonderful victory.
    ***
    We drove out of London, heading north through the East Midlands and across Yorkshire to Lancashire. I sat in the back with Monro wedged under