CHAPTER 26

“There’s a letter for you, Mum.”

Christine smiled at her briefly, but it was a polite, rather cool smile, the one she had been using ever since Mary had told her about Russell.

Mary had phoned Russell the day after their conversation, when Christine was out, to explain; he had been surprisingly agreeable about it, had said he was sure she’d come round in a day or two. As the two became three and then four, he was growing impatient. And it was so hard to talk to him at all; she had to wait for the phone until Christine was out. Well, only another week, and then she’d be in her own home; and she had booked a cab to take her over to the hotel on Saturday, when Christine would be out for the day and wouldn’t know. But the long-term prognosis was not good.

She took the letter from Christine-it was written in that unmistakable American handwriting-and went upstairs with it. “My darling Little Sparrow,” the letter began. “How hard this new separation is…”

That afternoon, Maeve walked quietly into Patrick’s room; he was sitting staring straight ahead of him; he had become very pale and thin in his two weeks’ incarceration.

“Hello, Patrick.”

He scarcely looked at her, just sighed and said, “Hello, Maeve.”

“How are you today?”

“I’m how you’d think,” he said, and his voice was heavy. “I am sick of being here in this bed. I’m in pain, I can’t sleep, I’m going to be here for the rest of my life, and no doubt people would say I deserve all of that, and I would say it of myself. I’m a murderer; I killed all those people-”

“Patrick, hush.” She went over to the bed, put her arms round him, kissed his cheek. “Patrick, you don’t know that. You have to try to keep faith with yourself; something else might have happened… You can’t remember-”

“I remember enough,” he said, “enough to know I was desperate for sleep, biting my own fists, counting backwards from a thousand-”

“You don’t… you don’t remember this other person being there with you? It’s not… not clearing at all?”

“No,” he said, his voice bitter. “If anything it’s going farther away. I’m beginning to think it was some kind of hallucination, wishful thinking…” He reached for a tissue, blew his nose, wiped his eyes. “How are the boys?”

“They’re fine. They want to come and see you so much. Callum has done you a fine picture, look, and Liam says I have to give you fifty kisses-shall I bring them in tomorrow, Patrick? Mum says she’ll drive us all down.”

“I don’t want to see them,” he said. “I want them to forget about me.”

“Forget about you? And what sort of a child will forget his own father? As fine a one as you? And why should he?”

“If the father is a killer, if he’s been responsible for the deaths of many people, he’s better forgotten, Maeve. I wish only one thing now: that I had been killed myself, that I had died in that cab-”

“Patrick Connell, will you just shut up now?”

The seemingly endless strain and exhaustion finally defeated Maeve; she felt angry with him, angry not for what he had done-or not done-but for his willingness to give in, to turn his back on the children.

“How dare you talk like that, how dare you, when the finest doctors in this hospital have worked so hard to save you, when your own children cry every night, they want to see you so much, when I feel so tired I could just lie down on that floor and sleep for all eternity myself. But I can’t, Patrick, because someone has to keep going. Someone has to see after the children, and visit you every day, and work so hard to cheer you, and-”

He turned his head to look at her, and his expression was quite blank, his eyes dull and disinterested.

“You don’t have to come,” he said. “It would be much better if you didn’t.”

Maeve straightened up, looked at him very briefly, and then picked up her bag and walked out of the room.

Russell’s letter had been to tell Mary that she wasn’t to worry about him; they had the rest of their lives together, after all, but to concentrate her efforts on making her peace with her daughter.

“That really is the most important thing right now. How extraordinary this all is! I’ve started to worry about my children’s reactions as well. Maybe we should run away together to Gretna Green and get married with just a couple of witnesses. But it’s not what I want, of course: I want all our friends and family there; I want everyone to watch us being married, you becoming Mary Mackenzie. After all these years.”

But Mary could see that both their families might find this a little difficult. And she was sure Russell’s rather grand family would look down on her. What had seemed incredibly romantic and exciting suddenly was turning into a depressing mess.

When Toby went down to the theatre, Barney headed in the direction of Cirencester. He parked in the centre of the town, sat down on a seat, and smoked a couple of cigarettes, and suddenly found himself consumed with anxiety, a fear that was so physical he actually shook, over what might be happening to Toby right this minute. How would he manage with only half a leg? What would he do when he couldn’t swim or run or play tennis or ski? How would he be able to cope with the social life of work, the rowdy drinking, the late-night dining, the clubbing, when he had to be helped in and out of places, relying on friends, on kindness, permanently grateful, always different from the rest. Of course, they would give him prostheses-people managed wonderfully well with such things, and Toby would try with all the courage he had to do the same. But at the end of the day, he would no longer be the Toby he had been, impatiently fit and fast; he would be a different, less independent creature, robbed of being physically confident, and-Barney knew-slightly ashamed, literally, of himself. And what of Tamara; what would she make of him, no longer her perfect, wonderfully handsome fiancé, but someone she would certainly see as second-rate, second choice? Give her six months, present her with a different and perfect young man, and it was horrible to contemplate how quickly she would back off, making ugly, feeble excuses…

Barney wrenched his mind off Tamara and looked at his watch, which had advanced terrifyingly far, and drove very fast back to the hospital.

He was in such a state of terror as he parked his car that he misjudged the size of the space available to him and hit the wing mirror of a horribly new-looking Audi TT in the next bay. Barney knew about those Audis; fixing it would cost several hundred pounds. Well, it hardly compared with a shattered leg. He scribbled a note and left it on the windscreen.

He looked at his watch: one fifteen. Shit. Toby would probably be out of the theatre now. Conscious and needing him. Fine friend he’d turned out. He ran across the car park, and then, unable to contemplate hearing the bad news on his own, made for A &E and Emma. It was deserted, apart from a woman with a wailing baby and an elderly man with an arm in a sling. He looked over at the reception desk; there was only one woman on duty, and she was chatting to a nurse about some event in the department that had taken place earlier in the day. He walked over and waited politely for what felt like ten minutes; then, driven beyond endurance, said, “Excuse me…”

“Yes?” said the woman coldly.

“I wondered if I could see Dr. King. Dr. Emma King?”

“What would it be concerning?”