A priest at the door

It was October 2010 the night the priest came to our door. The knock startled Tim’s dullard beagle into a howl just as Tim’s mother was serving up dinner. She and her husband had flown in from New York a few weeks earlier to care for their dying son.

Tim and I had moved to London the year before. Our friends — newsroom colleagues — visited sometimes, though only with advance notice. Tim’s brain tumour had severely blunted his wit. I was prone to crying jags. As a couple, we did not inspire drop-ins.

Tim’s mother told us to start eating and went to answer the knock. The beagle ricocheted in frenzy between food and front door. ‘Charity collectors,’ Tim’s father guessed.‘They love targeting dinner time.’

Tim’s parents were in their seventies: he a former newspaperman, she a retired librarian. They hailed from the Lower West Side of Manhattan and I from the Upper East, meaning we were nearly as foreign to each other as the English were to us.