She could be walking through Cardiff, going to meet a friend, listening to her iPod, and looking in the windows of Topshop, and without warning the terror would be there, the terror and the awful despair. She would stand still, shaking, feeling she would never move again, trying to set aside the memories and the guilt, and then she would have to call the friend, plead illness, and go home again, creeping under her duvet, crying, sometimes for hours at time.

And then, equally without reason, it would go again, and she would find herself able to say, Well, was it really so bad, what she had done? And no one need ever know, and one day, yes, one day she would go and see Patrick-who was, after all, still alive-and say she was sorry…

Only… she knew she couldn’t. She really, really couldn’t.

“Wednesday’s the big day now,” said Toby. He had rung Barney at work; his voice was painfully cheerful.

“Yeah? For… what?”

As if he didn’t know.

“Oh-this final washout thing. If they don’t think it’s working then-”

“Well, then, they’ll try again,” said Barney.

“Mate, they won’t,” said Toby.

“Course they will. They’re not going to give up on you.”

“No. Just take the leg off. Or some of it.”

“Oh, Tobes. Of… of course they’re not. Whatever makes you think that?”

“Because the fucking doctor told me so. He was very nice, very positive, said he was fairly confident that it would be OK, but we had to face the fact it might not be. I’ll have to sign a consent thing, apparently, before I go down. Shit, Barney, I’m scared.”

There was a silence; then Barney said, “So… have you told Tamara?”

“Oh, no, no. I thought it would upset her too much.”

“Well, that’s very brave of you,” Barney said carefully. “What about your parents?”

“No, I haven’t told them either. Poor old Mum, she’s upset enough as it is.”

“Well…” Barney sought wildly round for something to say that might help. “Well… tell you what, Tobes: would you like me to come down on Wednesday? Be there when it’s done? Not in the operating theatre, of course-don’t think I could cope with that-but I’ll spend the time beforehand with you, be there when you come back. With two good legs, obviously.”

“Shit, Barney, you are the best. Would you really? Yeah, that’d be great. They said it’d be the afternoon probably. I was thinking what a ghastly long day it would be. But… you’ll be-”

“I’ll be there…”

Sometime, when Toby felt better, Barney thought, they should discuss the little matter of the tyre. Just so that they were saying the same thing. If anyone asked Toby. Which they probably wouldn’t…

CHAPTER 24

Patrick was in the grip of a horror and fear that had a physical presence, that were invading him as surely as the pain had done on the day of the accident. Somehow talking to the police had made it worse, had made him more certain that he had gone to sleep; just hearing his own voice, describing it, made it seem impossible that there had been another explanation. He had killed all those people, ruined all those lives; it was his fault; he had blood on his hands as surely as if he had taken a gun and shot them all.

And not being able to remember anything made it worse, rendered him completely out of control. They’d told him it would come back, his memory, but the more he tried to remember, the more difficult it got; it was like trying to see through a fog that was thickening by the day. Even the other person in the van seemed to be disappearing into that fog. And even if someone had been there, he had still been at the wheel…

The horror never left him; he lay for hours just wrestling with it, woke to it, slept his drugged sleep with it, dreamed of it. There was no room for anything else: for hope, for calm-just the horror rendering it ugly and even obscene. It was all going to go on until he died; there was no escape anywhere. He reflected on all the skill and care that were going into his recovery, or his possible recovery, and there seemed no point, absolutely no point at all in any of it. He wished it would stop altogether; he wished he could stop.

And then in a moment of revelation, it came to him that actually, if he really wanted that, he could.

“You look tired, Mum; why don’t you go through and watch TV. Gerry’ll help me clear away, won’t you, Gerry?”

“Oh… no,” said Mary. Her heart thumped uncomfortably. “Look… I’d like to talk to you both about something. The thing is… well, look, dears, this may come as… well, as a bit of a surprise to you, but you know I was on my way to London last week? The day of the crash? I wasn’t entirely honest about the reason. I was going to meet someone.”

“Yes, you said… A friend.”

“Indeed. But he was a little more than a friend.”

“He? Mum, what have you been up to?”

Christine’s eyes were dancing.

“Well, the person I went to meet was an American gentleman. Called Russell Mackenzie.”

“Good heavens! And-”

“Well, and we met a very long time ago. During the war. He was a GI and we… well, we became very fond of each other.”

“What, you had an affair, you mean?”

“Certainly not,” said Mary. “Not in the way you mean. We didn’t do that sort of thing in those days. Well, I didn’t, anyway.”

“But… you were in love with him?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “Very much.”

“Gosh, how romantic. Weren’t you tempted to marry him, go out there after the war, be a GI bride or whatever?”

“No. I wasn’t. I had promised to marry your father; we were unofficially engaged. He was in a prisoner-of-war camp. As you know.”

“But… you still had an affair-all right, a relationship-with this chap?”

“Yes, I did. But he knew there was no future in it, that I was going to marry your father.”

“But he carried on… chasing you? And you let him?”

“Well… yes. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it was wartime; things were very different.”

“Of course. Anyway, he went back to the States?”

“Yes, and married someone else in due course, and I married your father. But… we kept in touch. We wrote… regularly. All through the years. We remained very… close. In an odd way.”

“How regularly? A few times a year?”

It was best to be truthful. This was too important not to be. “No, we wrote at least once a month.”

“Once a month! Did Dad know?”

“No, he had no idea. I knew it would… upset him. That he wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either.” Christine’s face was suddenly flushed.

“You’re telling me you were so involved with this man you wrote to him every month, for years and years and years, right through your marriage, but it didn’t affect your feelings for Dad?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But, Mum, it must have done. I couldn’t deceive Gerry like that.”

“It wasn’t exactly deceit, dear.”

“Mum, it was. Did he tell his wife? This Russell person?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Well, it sounds pretty unbelievable. I mean that all you did was write. Did he ever come over; did you meet him without Dad knowing?”

“No, Christine, I didn’t. I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Well, go on.” She was looking almost hostile now. “What happened next in this romantic story?”

“Chris!” Gerry was looking very uncomfortable. “Don’t get upset.”

“Well, I am upset. I suddenly discover there’s been another man in my mother’s life that my father didn’t know about-if Dad had found out, Mum, don’t you think he’d have been upset?”

“Yes, I do. Which was why I never told him.”

“Well, then. It was wrong. Anyway, go on.”

Mary felt like crying; this was exactly what she had feared.