No one else in the room seemed to notice when the clock stopped ticking. Harriet noticed. She noticed everything these days; the specific pitch of laughter that meant people were finally relaxing, the pause before anyone said David's name, the way her friends' eyes slid briefly to the empty chair at the head of the table before sliding away again, guilty and quick, as if she hadn't seen. Eleven months. Eleven months of casseroles left on the doorstep, of people filling her house with warm noise they mistook for comfort. She was grateful. She was. It was just that comfort and grief weren't opposites, she'd learned. They could exist in the same room, at the same table, eating the same roast chicken. "Remember that holiday?" said Jo, refilling her glass. "The one in Portugal?" Everyone remembered. The rental car, the unmarked roads winding up into the hills, David absolutely certain he knew where he was going, not certain at all, the map upside down in his lap and his jaw set with magnificent stubbornness while the sun went down around them. "He threw the map out the window," said Harriet. "He did," said Jo. "He actually did." "Said it was making him more confused." They laughed, all of them, and for a moment the chair at the head of the table wasn't empty at all. For a moment the sound of him was right there in the room. That big, ridiculous, defiant laugh of his, and Harriet held very still and let herself have it. They'd found their way eventually. Some farmer's track, a village, a restaurant with no menu where they ate whatever was brought to them and drank too much and walked back to the car in the dark. It had been one of the best nights of her life. All things considered, losing the map was the least permanent consequence.