Kathy and Tommy’s final farewell

Kathy and Tommy’s final farewell is a deliberately understated parting at Kingsfield: during Kathy’s last visit as his carer, Tommy shares a childhood secret, they kiss, and he watches her drive away. The scene makes intimacy visible not through a grand declaration but through a remembered gesture, a small confidence, and the effort to remain together until the last moment.

The Last Visit

In the weeks before the farewell, Kathy and Tommy spend their time together with an ease that surprises her in retrospect. She visits three or four times a week, though work with other donors in North Wales keeps her away more than she would like. In Tommy’s room, they sometimes have sex, more often talk, or have Kathy read while Tommy listens. Once or twice he takes out his notebook to sketch ideas for new animals as she reads. Their routine gives the coming separation an almost carefree surface without removing its pressure.

Kathy arrives just after one o’clock on a crisp December afternoon, expecting without knowing why that something in Tommy’s room might have changed. Everything is as usual, and the familiarity is a relief. But when they begin talking, neither can pretend this is another ordinary visit. They have already discussed so much in the previous weeks that no particular conversation remains to be completed; neither wants to begin something they may not finish. The resulting emptiness is not a lack of closeness but the form their awareness of the ending takes.

Ruth and the Unfinished Knowledge

During the visit, Kathy asks whether Tommy is glad that Ruth completed before learning everything they eventually discovered. Kathy does not want to turn the moment into a long discussion, and agrees with Tommy’s view that Ruth had wanted the best for them at the end. In retrospect, she is less certain that it was better for Ruth not to know. Her wish that Ruth had learned the whole truth is not simply a wish to make her confront the damage she once caused: Kathy says she has no anger left. What troubles her is the thought that Ruth completed separated from Kathy and Tommy by knowledge they came to share, as if the three of them had been left on opposite sides of a line.

That reflection gives the farewell a second, quieter loss. Kathy and Tommy are parting from one another, but they are also measuring the distance between their final understanding and Ruth’s. Kathy imagines that Ruth, had she been able to see that division, would have felt sad about it too.

Tommy’s Secret

They make no grand farewell. When it is time to leave, Tommy comes downstairs with Kathy, something he does not usually do, and walks with her across the Square to the car. The sun is already setting behind the buildings. A few shadowy figures remain beneath the overhanging roof, while the Square itself is empty; Tommy is silent on the way to the car.

Then he tells Kathy about a private ritual he had as a boy at Hailsham. Whenever he scored a football goal, he would raise his arms in triumph and run back to his teammates. In his imagination, he was splashing through shallow water, no deeper than his ankles. He repeats the sound of that imagined running—“Splash, splash, splash.”—and says he never told a single soul. The memory joins the present farewell to his childhood without turning it into a simple story of escape: the water exists only in his imagination, yet the remembered sensation remains one of his private sources of pleasure.

The Parting and Its Afterlife

Kathy laughs at Tommy’s confession, calling him a crazy kid. They share a small kiss, and she gets into the car. Tommy stays outside as she turns around and pulls away, smiling and waving. He is still standing there in her rear-view mirror almost until the last moment; near the end, he raises his hand vaguely once more and turns toward the overhanging roof. Then the Square disappears from view.

Kathy later rejects the idea that even the most precious memories necessarily fade quickly. She remembers losing Ruth and then Tommy, but insists that she will not lose her memories of them. That conviction gives the modest details of the goodbye—Tommy walking downstairs with her, the raised hand, the receding figure—the force of something preserved rather than resolved. She also says that she has never tried to find the place where Hailsham used to be, despite hearing stories and rumors about what it has become. The farewell thus closes a shared life without offering reunion or restoration; what remains to Kathy is the memory of Tommy, including the secret he chose to give her at the end.