Two sisters are distressed and disturbed by their father's display of 'desperate, choking, terrified devotion' to their mother as she lies dying in her bed. Time begins to heal the wounds inflicted by the loss, yet the sisters fear that their father may never recover. But as the ghost of his grief finally begins to relinquish its hold over the family home, the sisters are surprised to find that it is they who are totally unprepared for their father's first steps into an unforeseen future.

Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collectionThe Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read

Susan Hill's novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is the author of over fifty books, including the five previous Serrailler crime novels,The Various Haunts of Men,The Pure in Heart,The Risk of Darkness,The Vows of SilenceandThe Shadows in the Street. The play adapted from her famous ghost story, The Woman in Black, has been running in the West End since 1989; it has also recently been made into a film starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at King's College London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, and they have two daughters. She lives in Gloucestershire, where she runs her own small publishing firm, Long Barn Books.