The day Helena left something inside Harry Manning died forever. His heartbeat was normal, according to the paramedics his daughter Maria called from her father's home on that dreadful Sunday morning after she found him lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. Two days earlier, Harry and Helena had celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Unable to sleep, edgy with excitement for the big day ahead, Harry had risen early and had gone to watch the sea. He had walked along the Flanagan's marshes up to the public beach, looking for fragments of memories, to retrace the path of their first outing together. Their subsiding steps over the sand dunes, Helena had walked in her impractical high-heeled shoes. He pushed as far as the shoreline, looking for the stretch of shore where they laid side by side, squeezing their palms together, feeling the piercing grains of wet sand pinning their beings into one. It was as though Harry had a premonition that morning, that something was about to change in his predictable happy life, and that he needed to relive a moment of their mind dazzling beginning before he took a plunge into the obscurity of the imminent ending.
