My darling boy.
You’re home, he said.
Evelyn immediately joined Cressy in the pensione kitchen and what would once have been considered an unusual friendship became a golden one. Cress said that being with Evelyn was like being with Pellegrino Artusi himself. Ravioli straight from the pages of the book. Cress talked about Paola and Evelyn said she sounded the most formidable woman and Cress said, She was, she was. For a while I was the happiest man on earth.
Cress and Evelyn were on the stone bench together the day they learnt Bobby Kennedy had been shot. Cress said he feared for mankind, and hand in hand they walked silently back home.
Cress took to his bed and Evelyn settled on the sofa and started a letter to Dotty about the end of goodness. Such violence for June. We had the best and I’m not sure we’ll see the like again. How cruel that glimpse of what might have been, she wrote.
The front door opened. Evelyn! Evelyn!
It was Alys. The same sweet intense look on her face as the day they’d met.
Did you hear? she said.
I heard, said Evelyn. Come, and she lifted her arm and Alys sat under it.
Pete came in next. I’m not one to swear, Evelyn, but fuck it all, he said.
Come here, said Evelyn and she lifted her other arm.
At the age of eighty-seven Evelyn Skinner became an unexpected mother. A role she was far more suited to than she had ever imagined.
Turbulence and heartbreak overshadowed everything that year and man’s first orbit around the moon failed to lift Cressy’s spirit to the dizzying heights that science and achievement often did.
Despite the sombre lilt to the air, Christmas Eve at Michele’s went ahead. A feast of togetherness, no more no less – that’s how Ulysses described it. He stood at the window overlooking the square and Giulia came up to him and said, How long’s Cressy going to stay out there, Ulisse? and Ulysses shrugged. Till he finds what he’s looking for.
An old man standing on a bench with a telescope pointed at the moon. In the very gesture of his defiant, unmoving stance was a prayer for the world.
And as he looked up, so a man looked down.
From a small window in Apollo 8, 250,000 miles away from the earth, William Anders loaded his Hasselblad camera with colour film and took a photograph.
（Click.）
Here would be the hope, Cressy.
（Click.）
Here would be your answered prayer. A simple image of what the moon sees:
Us.
A blue marbled sphere, amplified by the lunar horizon, precious and beautiful and vulnerable, floating in the eternal darkness we all shall face. That’s how Evelyn described it whilst gazing at the cover of Cressy’s Life magazine. Cress thought Evelyn had something of the poets about her, but didn’t everyone that year, Cress? Loss and love. The only ingredients required.
So, 1969 was underway. Last year of the decade. You’d better have something good up your sleeve or— Yeah, right.
In London, January was sleeting its guts up and Col was woken by the ringing of a telephone. He got out of bed complaining.
What the fu—？
It was the hospital. Acid reflux began to spurt like Vesuvius.
He phoned Mrs Kaur and was outside her shop in half an hour, handing over Ginny. Thank you, he said. Really, thank you.
Mrs Kaur had a calming presence. I’ll bring Ginny back home tomorrow, she said. And I’ll offer up prayers for Peg. And be careful on the road, Mr Formiloe.
Col pulled into Whipps Cross Hospital siren screeching, hammering the dash and causing confusion with the bona fide ambulance drivers waiting outside, smoking.
Along the corridors, he could feel his emotions churn. So mixed it was, all his fear and pain, as boy and man. Peg had told the doctor he was her next of kin. No one had ever done that for him, not even Agnes in them early days.
At the desk he asked for Peggy Temper. I mean Peggy Holloway, he said.
（He’d never got used to the name change like he’d never got used to the marriage.）
This way, said matron.
Legs like jelly now.
Second on the left, said matron. Go on, Mr Formiloe. Go on in, be brave.
Col took a deep breath and pulled back the curtain. Oh Peg, he said and sat down. He took hold of her hand, but she didn’t wake. Gently pushed back her hair. Bruised and concussed but all in one piece, thank God. Matron said she was a walking miracle. Tell me something I don’t know, he said.
Mr Holloway? A policeman peered round the curtain.
No. I’m Mr Formiloe. Friend. Old friend. Long before the cunt she married came along.
Policeman tried not to smile.
So, booze, was it? said Col.
No.