Queenie Hennessy's Destiny

The quiet life and sacrificial death of Queenie Hennessy: her loneliness, her act of substitution, her disappearance, and her final waiting.

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The Quiet Accountant

The Quiet Accountant The Plain Woman In Brown Queenie arrives at the brewery as its first professional woman in finance. She is stout, plain, precise, and mocked by the men who imitate her handbag and her walk. The Kindness Beneath The Surface She can sing songs backwards, loves pear drops and liquorice, and carries Mars bars for Harold on the homeward drives. Her quietness hides a sharp sense of humour. The Unseen Heart Harold is one of the few people who sees her. When he comforts her in the stationery cupboard, he begins a friendship that will define both their lives.

The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice A Witness To The Night Queenie sees Harold sitting in his car outside the brewery, possibly crying. The next day, when Napier's Murano glass clowns are found smashed, she knows who did it. The Lie That Saved Him She tells Napier she broke the clowns while dusting. Because she is a plain woman, he is thrown off balance and fires her on the spot. She takes Harold's shame and disappears. The Unsent Message Before she leaves, Queenie goes to Fossebridge Road to tell Harold not to worry. Maureen takes the message and never passes it on.Queenies fate is sealed by that betrayal.

Disappearance To Berwick

Disappearance To Berwick The New Life In The North Queenie leaves the South West without a forwarding address. She ends up in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where she lives alone, still unmarried, still dignified, and increasingly forgotten. The Quiet Years Harold does not look for her. He passes twenty years without contact, building the silence that the pink letter will have to break. The Seedhead In The Hedgerow By the time she writes, Queenie is a woman with no family and no friends. Her only lasting legacy is the kindness she showed a man who never thanked her.

The Letter From The Hospice

The Letter From The Hospice A Diagnosis With No Hope Queenie learns that her cancer is inoperable. Her tongue and half her throat have been removed, and a tumour grows from her jaw. She writes to Harold because there is time for one last thing. The Childish Handwriting The envelope is in her own unsteady hand, the letters collapsing into one another. The letter itself is typed, but the postscript is a botched squiggle. It is the hand of a dying woman. The Goodbye That Was Not Queenie does not ask for help. She only wants to thank Harold for his friendship and to send regards to Maureen. But the letter will call a pilgrim into being.

A Good Death

A Good Death The Room With The Quartz Harold visits, but Queenie cannot speak. He hangs a rose quartz at her window. She watches it twist and scatter stars, too tired to keep looking. The Childhood Staircase Queenie slips into a memory of running down stairs in red leather shoes, while a good man calls her name. She answers, Here I am. The game her father played becomes her deathbed. The Smile Before The End The young sister says Queenie smiled just before she died, as if she had found something. The smile may have been the arrival of all she had been waiting for.

Years at the brewery, before David's death

Twenty years before the story, after David's death

Twenty years before the story

Weeks before the story opens

The day after Harold's visit