Our second evening was almost as good, spent in the Forth, just up Pink Lane from our hotel, because we had a visitor. We had just given our food order at the bar when Maz squealed, LC looking terrified for a few seconds as Ish calmed her, before turning to offer a hand to our new arrival after he had released Maz from his hug and finished wiping his eyes.

“Neil. Be welcome, mate. Be so bloody welcome! Carolyn?”

She started, almost as if slapped.

“Ish?”

“This is Neil. He is not just your friend, he is someone who helped Dad find you”

I stepped forward to relieve my wife and son of their hugging duties, but I felt all too reluctant to release him, for Ish had been absolutely on the mark. Without Neil, no Lexie, no Di, no Rahim. No family.

I could feel him starting to tremble, so set him free to take the seat we had held for him. He settled himself, then smiled at LC, who recoiled slightly.

“Carolyn?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“Remember when Mum and me showed you our wedding photos?”

“Yes?”

“This is the man who took them. Do you remember Lexie? Di’s friend?”

“Was she the one with the hole in her head?”

Shit.

“Yes, that’s the one.. Neil was the man… the friend who said to Lexie that we had lost you. Before Lexie and Di did their thing to find you. Do you want to say thank you?”

“Thank you”

She clearly didn’t get it fully, but she was still so young; it would come. I turned my smile back to Neil.

“What do you have for us, mate?”

“Are you okay with a youth hostel, mate?”

“I am not sure”

“It’s next to a pub”

“Ah! That’ll be the Twice Brewed, then. Still not sure, though”

I glanced at Carolyn, and he nodded.

“That’ll be why I booked the cottage up the lane, then”

He was grinning, but I could still detect the fragility it covered, as he kept glancing at my wife, almost as if checking a scorecard. Two found, but one lost.

“I’m on the Kwak today, Mike”

“That still running?”

“Sort of. I swapped engines about ten thousand miles ago, and the forks and rear shocks have all been replaced twice, so it’s a bit Argo Navis”

“What’s a go nah viss, Tuan?”

Maz patted her shoulder.

“This is Neil, my darling. He is and always will be a friend. Just ‘Neil’, okay?”

“Neil. Sorry”

He turned his smile on, it seeming to come far more easily for a child.

“Argo Navis means ‘the ship Argo’, Carolyn. It’s from a very old story. If you have a… do you know what an axe is?”

She twitched, but nodded. There was a story there I wasn’t sure I needed to hear any day soon.

“Well, if I have an old axe, and it’s so old that I have had to change the handle six times, and replace the head four times, is it still the same axe? Argo Navis is like that, but about a wooden ship”

“No. Is your quacker made of wood?”

“No, love. My Kwak is a motorbike, and the frame is still the original one. And the petrol tank. Everything else—oh, and the handlebars and stuff. Everything else is newer”

He turned back to me.

“Got a room in the Station, mate, so we can plot last details over breakfast. I… can we have a couple of minutes outside, just for a chat?”

I nodded, slipping a quiet “Back in a bit” to my wife before following him out into the street, where he found some space sitting on a window ledge of the Town Wall pub. I joined him, asking what was up, and he sighed.

“History, Mike. I want to… I used to go up… WE used to go up to the Wall regularly. Maddy and me. It was… We had been… Start again. I was staying at Garrigill, doing some general work. Maddy was, coincidence, was working in Durham City. That was when we got together. That was… first times, Mike. First of everything. We found a helmet for her, and we spent the next day visiting the Wall. Never looked back from there, either of us, and we came back up so many times. Stayed in the pub so often they knew what we drank and almost had it ready before we ordered it”

He paused, his gaze years away in memory.

“There’s a place we loved, a little Roman temple, not an obvious thing from the road”

“Brocolitia?”

“That’s the one. Place really spoke to both of us, and, well, Maddy and me, both sort of isolated from the mainstream ourselves, it really was ours. We have an entire section of our catalogue devoted to it. I might… First times, yeah? This is the first time I have been back, will have been, since I lost her. If I get silly, please don’t worry”

I laid an arm over his shoulder as a group of young men walked past.

“Ah haddaway, ye fuckin’ aad puffs!”

Pull it back in, Rhodes. Not the time.

Neil was chuckling now, which was odd.

“Perfectly wrong timing, mate! Anyway, bit of odd coincidence stuff. When Maddy… When we first went there, someone was sprinkling ashes. I am pretty certain it was Debbie, the one with the girls? Old Pat’s friend?”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“Some day, I’ll have to tell her. I, we, we took loads of photos that day. She might want one or two”

And you might just put your foot in it big style, mate, but once again, not now.

“You okay to join the others now?”

“Better be. She’s terrified, isn’t she? Carolyn?”

“I think so. Ish was saying how she talks about friends, frightened they disappear once out of sight”

“Frightened her freedom is temporary I’d guess”

“I rang Kul a few days ago, as a video call”

“That must have cost a bomb!”

“Priorities, Neil”

“Point taken, mate. Did it help?”

“I do believe it did. She calls him the ‘smiley beard’, and that’s what she got”

“Oh… nearly forgot. Did you pack your rock boots?”

“Me and Ish both, just in case. We sort of assumed we’d need them with the Hiatts”

I lowered my voice, checking the door of the Forth, just in case.

“Also brought her boots, Neil. Ust in case”

“What I would have expected. Right, time for another pint”

He rose from his impromptu seat and led the way back in, where we found Maz and LC guzzling crisps as Ish guided the barman through the creation of an LLB. Neil did, of course, have a paper map with him, and it was a specific archaeological one of the Roman Wall, with all the relevant sites marked. Maz was beaming.

“What you called my ‘bucket list’, husband of mine?”

“Well, you are my SWMBO, after all, wife of mine. Oh, Ish? She Who Must be Obeyed. H. Rider Haggard, not H.P.L. Fewer tentacles”

Neil chuckled at that one before adding that Alys had now moved on to the works of Charlie Stross, which had more than enough tentacles to go around, thank you very much, and I realised that my pint had been replenished rather more often than I had noticed, the clock advancing in parallel, and that was the first inkling that I was accepting a new condition in my life.

Safety. My family, all of us, were safe. Finally.

Breakfast was a solid one, and yes, we did leave with a few sandwiches, muffins and pieces of fruit for later. After a short visit to a corner shop to top up our tea and breakfast supplies, Neil led the way out of the city until we were on a fast dual carriageway, where I nearly lost him as he flicked through the junctions at Heddon. The road had changed little since my last visit, and old memories were warming me as Maz slipped our new copy of ‘Old Durham Road’ into the CD player, with a grinning comment about accents and old straight roads as Ish almost obsessively followed our progress on his phone’s mapping app.

We had agreed to stop at Chesters for a look at the museum, which forcibly reminded me that this was the first time there for my whole family, even though it was all so familiar to me. That was when I understood that Carolyn hadn’t even known what ‘Roman’ meant until we had entered that same museum. So many gaps to fill, as Maryam might have said, all those years ago. It was actually a good thing that we had agreed that stop, because Maz had insisted we stop for a bird check at Harlow Hill and the Whittle Dene reservoirs, and she was, after all, SWMBO.

I was actually feeling a little excited myself, as I knew what was coming, and it would bring joy magnified by the number of new eyes I was bringing to enjoy it, so it took me a little time before I realised that Carolyn was now joining in with the rest of us as we sang along with Jez Lowe.

Our last stop before a visit to the massive Housesteads fort was, of course, to a tiny temple, hidden away from the road. I made an excuse about needing a coffee from the stand in the car park, which allowed Neil a few moments on his own to salve his grief. As Ish talked LC through the soft drinks, yet another blinded spot in her knowledge, I explained to Maz.

“This was where he took Maddy, love. The morning after, well, after they had…”

“After she had first become his, and vice versa?”

“Yes. Exactly”

“Shit. He’ll be wobbly tonight, then”

“We have a cottage, love, and he will be fine”

“And if he isn’t fine, he will be later, yes?”

“We will make sure of it, love”

We gave him twenty minutes before following the path round the former fort walls until we found Neil leaning on the wooden fence next to the stile, his eyes more than a little red. Maz and the kids hung back for a while as I checked on him.

“You okay, mate?”

“Sorry, Mike. Just realising I should have come here years ago. Let Maddy have this place to dance in. I looked it up, you know?”

“Sorry? What did you look up?”

“When I saw what I think was Debbie, and they were sprinkling ashes. What one of them said, and I am pretty sure, it was in Welsh, yeah? I think it was ‘Dance on the wind’ and, well, made a decision. Maddy is still at home with me, but I think I should let her dance as well”

He gave me a weary smile.

“Like I said, first time I have been back here since things happened. This… I will be back here in a month or so, and my wife will get her dance”

He drew in a long breath before asking, in a steadier voice, what our next destination would be.

“Sheffield”

That broke the spell.

“Why didn’t you go there on the way to York?”

“Ah, timing. I want to catch the office lot on a Friday, for the post-office drinks. Then it’s a surprise for Ish before we hit North Wales. Talk us through the temple, mate?”

The cottage was in a prime position, a short way up a lane from the Youth Hostel, which was in turn almost next door to the pub. I parked the car on the patch of hard standing out the front while Neil walked his Kwak into the garden before applying a multitude of locks. Once we had shed our loads in appropriate rooms, I convened the family.

“Right, you lot! Time for an amble, and just this once it will be away from the pub. Outdoor clothes and rucksacks. Got that bag I gave you, Ish?”

“Yes, Dad!”

“Dad?”

Where was her new confidence coming from?

“Yes, love?”

“Can I take Kawan?”

“Of course. He’d be lonely here, wouldn’t he? Chop-chop, then!”

No sooner in the cottage than out of it, up the road to the Pennine Way just before the Steel Rigg carpark and that iconic view across to Crag Lough, the Wall running along the top of Peel Crags before the dip of Sycamore Gap, Maz seeming more excited with each step. I let Neil stride ahead, a massive rucksack on his back and our children in his wake, as I took time for two of us.

“Remember what I said about bucket lists, love?”

She grinned, far more relaxed than she had been at Dunwich.

“I remember us saying we weren’t going to see it as a ‘before I die’ thing!”

“Exactly. Can we see it now as an ‘I’M ALIVE’ one?”

I took a kiss before she could answer, so she left that as her reply, and her response to the view of Crag Lough was similarly wordless. We followed the Way across the top of Peel Crags, the Wall marching beside us, until we arrived at the famous Gap., and the dance began as Neil, Ish and myself worked several cameras to get as many memories as possible locked down, and once again, as in Espy, Maz found a random passing stranger to ensure we had photos of the whole family, including Kawan.