like. There was always a surprise in that. He’d choose a theme first and then find pictures which he’d stick onto a six millimetre sheet of plywood before cutting it with a scroll saw. It was a fiddly job, but Dennis was good at fiddly things. Last year’s had been flowers, Marigold loved flowers. The year before had been birds. This year he had chosen an old-fashioned scene of an ice rink with grown-ups and children skating in the falling snow. He’d found the picture in the charity shop and thought she’d like it. As he sat in the pew his mind turned to her puzzle and his excitement warmed him on the inside like the baked potato his mother used to put in his coat pocket when he walked to school in the wintertime. Marigold had always loved jigsaw puzzles and Dennis was very good at making them. Every year he tried to make it a little more complicated or a little bigger, to give her a greater challenge. This year he knew he had outdone all the others. It was made up of over a hundred small pieces and would take her a long time to put together because he hadn’t taken a photograph of the original picture for her to copy. He glanced at her, sitting beside him with her cheeks rosy from the walk and her hazel eyes sparkling from the pleasure it had given her. He took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed it back and smiled. Nan noticed, tutted and shook her head. They were much too old for that, she thought sourly.
After the service the congregants gathered in the hall for tea and biscuits. This was the bit Marigold and Dennis liked the best. Nan liked it the least. She had lived in the village all her married life and had suffered the socializing her husband had enjoyed, but after she had been widowed she’d always taken herself home as soon as the vicar had said the Blessing. Now she had no choice but to mingle because she was dependent on Marigold and Dennis, and she needed Dennis’s arm to help her back to the house.
Marigold and Dennis were talking to their neighbours, John and Susan Glenn, when Marigold felt a light tapping on her shoulder. She turned to see the round, eager face of Eileen Utley, who was in her nineties and still played the organ at every Sunday service without making a single mistake. She was holding Marigold’s handbag. ‘You left this in the pew,’ she said.
Marigold looked at the handbag and frowned. Then she looked at her right arm, expecting the bag to be hooked over it, as usual. To her astonishment, it wasn’t. ‘How strange,’ she said to Eileen. ‘I must have been thinking about something else.’ Daisy coming home, perhaps? ‘Thank you.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve been getting a bit forgetful lately. This isn’t the first time I’ve left something behind. But look at you, Eileen. As sharp as a tack. Nothing forgetful about you!’
‘I’m ninety-two!’ said Eileen proudly. ‘I’ve still got all my marbles. The secret is crosswords and Sudoku. They keep your mind working. It’s like a muscle, you see. You have to exercise it.’
‘Mum does the crossword every day.’
‘And look at her.’ They both turned their eyes to Nan, who was holding a cup of tea and complaining to the vicar about the lack of salt on the road. He was listening with the patience God had given him for these very moments. ‘She’s still got all her marbles too, hasn’t she?’
‘Oh, she has.’
‘How is it, having her at home?’
‘I think she’s happier living with us. Dad’s been gone over fifteen years now and it’s lonely on your own. She doesn’t like animals, so she was never going to have a dog or a cat for company. She tolerates Mac and he gives her a wide berth. He only has eyes for Dennis anyway. It seemed logical as we had Daisy’s old room with no one in it. And it’s the least I can do. After all, she looked after me for eighteen years, didn’t she?’
‘You’re a good girl, Marigold,’ said Eileen, patting her on the arm. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she added, because Eileen popped into the village shop at nine every morning, not because she really needed anything, but because she didn’t have anything else to do.
Marigold hooked her handbag over her arm and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it was missing. She hadn’t,