Barney and Emma had had a lovely evening at the Stafford Hotel. They always did. There were guilt and anxiety folded into it, into all of it, but time together was still astonishingly sweet.

“We have to tell them. Don’t we?”

He hadn’t said that before-confronted their situation, what it actually meant. She’d been waiting-not too impatiently, for it was he who must act, his life that must so totally change, he who must be surer than sure about the two of them.

“I love you, Emma. I…” His voice shook slightly. “I don’t love Amanda. I thought I did, of course, but it was an illusion. I am fond of her beyond anything; I hate to make her unhappy, but I can’t marry her. And when she knows, she won’t want it either. So… I will tell her very soon. I hate these lies, hate living them day after day. It’s awful.”

“Do you think she knows? Suspects… anything?”

“I don’t know. Would you?”

“I would, I think. Yes.”

“Ah. Well, then. Within the next few days.”

“Oh, Barney.”

“Oh, Emma. What about you?”

“He really, really won’t mind that much. He’ll think he does, but he won’t. He’s quite… quite thick-skinned.” And then added, anxious not to blacken Luke, who had seemed so recently everything she wanted, “But so lovely in so many ways.”

He nodded, looking at her rather solemnly.

“Like you.”

“What, thick?”

“No. Lovely in so many ways. I love you, Emma. So much.”

“I love you, Barney. So much.”

They left the Stafford soon after ten: Emma to go back to Swindon, Barney to go home to Amanda.

They walked out of the restaurant hand in hand; they had kissed hello, and during the course of the evening had kissed again from time to time, albeit in a very seemly manner, usually because one of them had said something that particularly delighted the other.

No one could have possibly complained about their behaviour; it had been modest, well mannered, and really rather charming.

No one, that is, who was unaware of a relationship either of them might have been conducting with another party altogether.

But as they walked out through the foyer, smiling at each other, Barney failed to recognise that among a rather noisy party of eight, arriving for a posttheatre supper, were Gerard and Jess Richmond. Tamara’s parents. And following them, out of a second taxi, together with a couple of other friends, Tamara herself.

CHAPTER 37

“Barney hi. This is Tamara. I thought we might have a little drink this evening. My treat. No, just the two of us. What? Oh, no, Barney, I think you could spare half an hour. It really is quite important. Great. How about One Aldwych? Well, I know it’s a bit of a trek, but maybe better than right on our own doorstep. You know what they say…? Only joking…”

Patrick woke early on Thursday morning. Early for him, that was, which meant before six. He had slept badly, which he usually did now they were weaning him off the sleeping pills. They were the worst hours, those early ones, when the depression that he could hold off-just-during the day hung around him like a shroud, when the fears that he would never progress beyond the stage he was at now, bedridden and helpless, never going home, never being together with Maeve and the boys again, never making love to Maeve again-that was one of the worst-those fears were at their strongest, their most dangerous. He had moved himself away-with his own willpower, and the help of the hospital priest-from thoughts of suicide; but the alternative, this death-in-life, seemed little better.

He looked out of the window at the blackness. Where had God been when he’d needed Him so badly? Looking the other way, it seemed. Well, that would have been Maeve’s explanation…

He sighed; he was thirsty and hot. Maybe he could get the dear little night nurse, the one who had found him that night and of whom he had grown rather fond, to make him a cup of tea. He rang the bell.

Sue Brown made him a cup of tea, and promised to be back soon, but she had to sort out a couple more patients; it was after seven when she got back to Patrick.

“Right, Patrick, let’s get this job done, shall we? Then you can have your breakfast. I’ll start with your catheter and then give you a nice wash. Let’s see… right…”

Sue Brown was intent on her task; she didn’t hear the slight intake of breath from the patient as she pulled on the catheter, but as she started to insert a fresh one, there was another. Followed by, “What are you doing there, Sue, putting a bit of barbed wire in?”

She looked at him; then, afraid even to ask the question, she said, “Patrick, am I hurting you?”

“Not hurting, no. But it’s not exactly comfortable…”

Sue Brown closed her eyes, briefly. This was-well, it might be-acutely important.

She withdrew the catheter again, laid it gently on the tray, and said, “Patrick, I seem to have forgotten something. I’ll be back in one minute, all right?”

Jo Wales was drinking a very bitter cup of coffee, thinking that really a hospital that had cost over a billion to build might have spent an extra five hundred on a decent coffee machine, when Sue Brown walked in. Or, to be more accurate, seemed to explode into the space in front of her.

“Jo… Jo, I don’t know what to do. Could you come with me, please?”

“What to do about what, Sue?”

“It’s Patrick Connell. He… well, I was just changing his catheter and he said it was uncomfortable. The catheter. When I tried to insert it. Was it a piece of barbed wire, he said.”

Jo stared at her; her heart thumped uncomfortably.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “God, Sue, that is exactly, exactly what we’ve all been waiting for. Let me come in to him straightaway. But… nothing must be said to him yet. All right?”

“Of course not,” said Sue Brown, half indignantly. “That’s exactly why I’m here, not saying anything to him; I wanted your opinion.”

And thus it was that five minutes later, Jo Wales smiled radiantly at Sue Brown across Patrick’s bed, having received the same rather plaintive response as she too tried to insert the catheter, and then at Patrick himself, and said, very gently, “Patrick, I think we might have some rather good news here. I’m going to call Dr. Osborne straightaway.”

Never, as Patrick said to her, after Dr. Osborne had come up to see him personally and first peered at and then prodded it, had his modestly sized willy caused so much excitement.

“So… Barney, what would you like? Cocktail? Beer? Or should we push the boat out, have a glass of champagne? Drink to both our forthcoming nuptials?”

“I’ll have a beer, please,” said Barney.

“OK. And I think I’ll have something nonalcoholic, actually. I want to keep a clear head.”

“Fine.”

“Right… so…” She paused while she gave the order, settled back in her chair. She smiled at him, crossed her long legs rather deliberately. She was wearing a red dress and black, very high-heeled shoes; she looked… what? Slightly dangerous.

“So… what do you want to talk about?” he said.

“Well… I don’t know if Toby’s told you, but we’ve got a new date. Next May.”

“He hasn’t, no. I haven’t seen him for a bit. Now that he’s home…”

“Ah, yes. So you’re not hotfooting it down to the hospital every few days. What a good friend you were, Barney. How very… unselfish of you that was.”