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see you and John very happily joined together.” She smiled at me, her eyes misting a little with tears, and hugged me to her. I felt myself well up, all at once feeling the little girl, safe in her mother’s arms. The door opened behind us and I heard my father’s voice.
    “ What’s all this?” his tone was hearty, mixed with a hint of concern. I drew myself away from my mother and composed myself, ready to face my father’s close inspection.
    “I’ll see you downstairs,” my mother whispered to me, planting a kiss on my head, her own face now streaked by tears. As she turned to leave the room, she placed a gentle hand on my father’s shoulder. He closed his eyes, leant his head to one side and kissed it. It was a moment’s tender affection, genuine and heartfelt, but it was that one gesture that alleviated my fears and my anxious feelings, I knew in that instant that I wanted to marry John. I wanted to stand in twenty or thirty years’ time and share exactly a moment such as that with my own husband. As the door closed behind my mother, my father held out his hands for mine and I stood before him.
    “ I don’t need to ask you this as it’s been written on your face these past months, but tradition insists I do.” Here, he had fixed me with his most concerned face and gripped my hands more tightly. “Now, do you love John and want to marry him today?”
    I matched his serious question with my own solemn face and replied with a most heartfelt and vigorous nod. Smiling broadly, I added, “Without any question, Father.”
    “ I haven’t the words enough to tell you how proud I am of you, Immy. Your mother and I both are. You look…” he had stepped back and surveyed me, “...beautiful.”
            He had paused and I felt on the verge of sadness again, but now resolved to the excitement, I wanted to stave off any tears. I had stepped forward and stretched a little to place a kiss on his cheek. I stepped back and smiled at him.
    “I love you, Father.”
            He had smiled then too; a dazzling beam of satisfaction that radiated his pleasure at my words and his affection for me. I had basked in the warmth of it and felt happy. I remembered the feeling even then as I stood upon the threshold of his death. The room was not as I remembered it from that occasion; the curtains were drawn and my mother was long gone. The fire had not been lit that day and the walls exuded a chill air penetrating from outside. The bed too was smaller than I remembered it and the body lain within it seemed too big for the room. I avoided looking at it. I was stood upon the threshold, at the very edge of lies about to step into truth.
    “ Imogen?” John’s voice was gentle and the questioning tone enquired only if I was sure of what I was about to do. His hand was upon my shoulder and I leant my cheek against it, my eyes closed. At once, I was both grateful for him being behind me but I also needed to do this alone, and after a moment, I kissed his hand and stepped forward into the room. The gaslights cast my shadow across the bed and the sheet that had been pulled up over the body was beyond the reach of the gloomy light. My father, usually a forward thinking and modern man, refused to be connected to an electricity supply and so, with a surprisingly steady hand, I took up a lamp from the dresser and lit my father’s bedside oil lamp. The light jumped up the glass chimney and I turned down the wick to settle the flame. I glanced towards John who was still standing in the door frame, his jaw set in defiance at the lie we were about to prove false.
            I tried to smile at him but my mouth and lips were too dry and they would not form into any cheery expression; instead, I looked grimly down at the white sheet and lay a hand upon its cover. I held my breath and turned back the sheet enough to see the face beneath it. The flesh was drained and ashen, giving the skin a blue glow, as if Jack Frost