He had arrived at the desk there breathless, convinced she had been delayed, somehow, and had gone straight there, looking round wildly in reception on his way, half expecting to see her there, small and neat and smiling; only to be told that no, so sorry, there was no message, and no one had arrived asking for him either. And he had gone up to his room and ordered a martini and then another and sat in a chair, staring at the telephone, and after a while he began to weep, as he had not since he had been a young soldier leaving England on his way home at the end of the war, sitting in the lavatory in the troop train, thinking of Mary and wondering how he was going to get through the next eighty years or whatever without her.

And then, slowly but very surely, he started to get cross.

Russell was a very nice person, kind, caring, and for the most part thoughtful. But he was rich and successful; and like all rich and successful people, he was spoilt. All his life, from his earliest childhood, he had had everything he wanted: the toys, the outings, the fun. And, as he grew up, the girls.

Losing Mary had been the worst and greatest shock of his life; but once he had begun to recover from that and was returned to the world he knew, that of money and worldly success, he forgot any lessons he might have learned from her. He worked hard, to be sure, but for considerable rewards. He lived in both style and comfort-first one wife and then another ran his home and did what they were told-his children were brought up in awe of him, and his reputation as one of New York’s most generous philanthropists assured him further admiration. And now, in the senior compartment, as he called it, of a gilded life, he was rarely crossed, never criticised, and had his every demand almost instantly met.

He was finding the present situation extremely difficult. Whatever it was that had happened to Mary, this was the twenty-first century, for heaven’s sake. Even if she was unwell, she could have rung the hotel, or got word to him somehow. Or somebody could. It showed a lack of consideration as well as courtesy. He had gone to enormous trouble to make everything perfect for her; had anticipated her every need, answered her every question in advance. He had given her all the numbers: the hotel, his mobile…

Sorrow turned to self-pity turned to resentment turned to outrage. Mary had, not to put too fine a point on it, stood him up.

And now the damn sun had the nerve to shine…

“Mrs. Connell, are you all right?”

Maeve struggled to sit up; she had been asleep on the sofa in the ITU corridor.

A doctor was looking down at her; he had a lot of dark hair and very kind dark eyes. He looked about forty-five, possibly more; that was reassuring. Maeve felt that doctors should be old.

Certainly well into middle age.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, “thank you.”

“I’m Dr. Pritchard. I admitted your husband last night. I’m the A and E consultant. Specialist doctors and surgeons have been looking after him, but I wanted to come and see how he was doing, say hello. And to see how you were.”

“Never mind how I am-what about Patrick?”

Dr. Pritchard was silent. That’s it, she thought, he’s died, he’s gone, and they’ve sent this person with his kind eyes to tell me. He was probably specially trained, maybe even chosen for those eyes…

“He’s died, hasn’t he?” she said.

But: “No, he’s holding on. It’s amazing, but he is. He must be very strong, Mrs. Connell.”

“I s’pose he is, yes. I don’t know why; all he ever does is sit in that cab. So-”

“But he is still dangerously ill, I’m afraid. There were abdominal and chest injuries; his spleen is ruptured; we’ve had to remove one of his kidneys and part of his large intestine. None of which is necessarily fatal. And he’d lost a lot of blood, of course, but that’s fairly easily dealt with. He also had some injury to his heart: contusions, we call them-that is, blood collecting in a sac round it-but we put a needle in and drained it.”

“And… is he conscious?”

“Semi. Actually, we decided to keep him asleep last night, to make sure he was stable. Lot of drugs, of course, going round his system. He has a tube in his trachea-his throat-and he’s on a ventilator; it’s doing his breathing for him.”

“It sounds so dreadful,” she said.

“I know. But we would hope to extubate him quite soon now-”

“What does that mean?”

“Turn off the anaesthetic drugs and wean him off the ventilator. Take out the tube. He’ll start to breathe on his own and wake up. And then, of course, he’ll be given plenty of painkillers. He’ll be pretty out of it for a day or two.”

“When can I see him?”

“Oh, fairly soon. But you have to be prepared for a shock, Mrs. Connell. His face and hands are cut, his head is swollen and a bit out of shape, and there are all these tubes coming in and out of him. Not the prettiest sight, I’m afraid. And he’ll be very confused, but he’ll want to talk; people always do.”

“You’re very kind,” said Maeve, and meant it. People said the NHS was falling apart these days, but as far as she could see it was absolutely wonderful. Fancy a busy doctor finding the time to talk to her like this…

Time was actually not a problem for Alex Pritchard that day. He should have been at home-he was not officially on duty-but he had come in partly to check on the condition of the more serious victims of the crash, partly to get out of the house, the lovely big Edwardian house where he and Samantha had lived for fifteen years and raised two children. He felt sad and outraged that it was to be sold, and the proceeds were to buy another more than adequate house, as far as he could see, for Sam and the children and a rather inadequate flat for him. He was to lose the children he loved so much, apart from every other weekend; he was to lose quite a large proportion of his income; he was going to be extremely lonely-and all so that Sam could pursue her own life and her new relationship. OK, he hadn’t been the greatest husband; he’d been bad tempered and difficult, and absent a lot of the time, and yes, Sam had to bear the brunt of running the house, caring for the children, going to parents’ evenings and nativity plays on her own, all that stuff; but did he really deserve this… exile? Yes, he had had an affair, albeit a brief one, born of retaliation rather than desire, and how happy for Sam that he had, for her lawyer had been able to add it to the sins of omission and absenteeism that had lost him his family.

It was doomed to failure from the beginning, his marriage-he could see that now-to the lovely Sam, ten years younger than he, with her social ambition and her need for admiration. She had never understood the whole medical thing, the claims of the job, the loyalty to the patients, and never bothered to try either.

Why was he always late, why did a crisis at the hospital take precedence over a dinner party, why should she give up her time and energy to hospital causes? Why then was she so happy with the lifestyle his large salary brought her?

He had been beguiled by her, had thought he was marrying a princess, when beneath her lovely face and body was a self-seeking ugly sister.

Well, he had learnt his lesson and very painfully; and if he ever had another relationship it would be with someone who understood his career and the life it led him into, someone who was not concerned with her own life and her own ambitions. Only he never would have another relationship; he never would have the stomach for it.

He looked back at Mrs. Connell as he walked away and wondered how on earth she was going to cope with what lay ahead of her. For he had not told her that there was possible damage to her husband’s spinal cord. It was more than possible that he would be paralysed, a helpless cripple, wheelchair-bound, and how would she care for him, in addition to three young children?