Hal comes back to England once during the time he is with Sylvie, and for once, he is able to go to see Mary and not lie. It is a strange feeling. He tells her about Sylvie – or at least, he tells her that he's met Sylvie, not that it's Sylvie who has helped him through this period of being clean – and though there is a wistful look on Lady Mary's face, she seems happy for him.

And so he keeps coming back. It becomes a habit. When in England, he visits Lady Mary. Sometimes he can be honest with her, and talk frankly about the struggle of staying away from blood. Other times, he will come to her with someone's life-force still hot in his throat, and glibly chat about the weather, about the politics and court gossip of the day, and she seems none the wiser.

During the wars she dusts fluff off the lapels of whichever regiment's jacket he happens to be in that year. In her Georgian dress she admires his new fashions and talk of whatever music or actor is popular. She thinks the top hat and tails he turns up in in the 1840s are amusing.

He visits Mary less in the early years of the 20th century. There is a war on with the werewolves, and Lord Henry Yorke, vampire commander, has little time for a social life. When he does visit, the house has been turned into a hospital and Mary is floating around amid nurses and wounded officers with a pained expression on her face.

Fergus, who is the only one of Hal's regular companions to have the guts to say anything, thinks his visits insane. In public, Hal laughs off the comment; in private, he shows Fergus creative use of a crucifix, and Fergus desists from mentioning Lady Mary after that.

For two years in the 1950s, the visits stop. Pacing a dark room, behind boarded-up windows in Southend, Hal thinks of Lady Mary, and hopes that perhaps she has found her door and is not missing him. But when he and Leo finally decide he is safe to be let out, and Leo drives him to the house – now a museum – he finds her still drifting along the galleries, gazing vaguely at the portraits.

"Where ihave/i you been, my lord?" she asks, courtesying low.

Hal, his body automatically responding to the courtesy with a bow, makes up some story about being away. "But I am back now, and living in Southend, with friends," he says. "A werewolf, and another ghost, as a matter of fact. They are here, somewhere, seeing the house."

A visitor comes past him, desperately close, and he flinches. Mary does not seem to notice, and he moves them away into a quieter room where they can make polite conversation. Hal talks desperately about things he has listened to on the radio, about the economy and politics, and Mary listens. She does not seem to have changed since the day of her death; she is still as demure and timid as ever. When Leo and Pearl come to find him, Hal is more relieved than he cares to admit, and he is glad to leave with them.

He keeps going back, year after year, usually driven by Leo, although as the 70s turn into the 80s he goes with only Pearl as a chaperone. Pearl and Mary do not get on, and Pearl generally sits in the teashop while Hal visits Mary, before spending the journey back to Southend grumbling about the fashions on display.

The annual visit comes around just after he moves into Honolulu Heights. He finds it surprisingly hard to break the news of Leo's death and Pearl's passing to Mary – after all, she has been waiting for her door for much longer than Pearl – but she takes it calmly, and listens to his description of Annie and Tom and the baby with interest. Hal almost thinks she is laughing at the thought of him with a baby.

He does not tell her about how close he came to killing the shopkeeper, nor about how utterly alone he feels without Leo and Pearl.

But the long years of half-truths take their toll. When, finally, in the living room in Barry, Alex forces the two of them to confess to each other, Hal feels the weight lift off him. True, it is replaced by a different weight, a new sort of guilt, but after all, she too has been lying to him. Neither of them were ever quite what they seemed to each other; they had both been playing a part, from the moment they met.

Mary leaves, and Alex tells him she is planning to travel. Hal, preoccupied with other things, merely finds he is glad. She has been a long part of his long life, but she deserves her freedom at last.