Natalie was trying out a new recipe. She did it all the time. Cooking was the only thing she enjoyed so much she forgot where she was and that she was on her own with Kyra, jump-jump-bloody jump. In her head, she had her own restaurant, or maybe a catering business doing dinners and weddings. No, not weddings, she didn’t want to do Chicken à la King for a hundred, she wanted to do this Barbados Baked Fish with Stuffed Peppers for four. Or six. It was fiddly and the fish wasn’t the right sort, she could only get haddock, but she liked trying out things she’d never heard of to see how they came up. Then it would go down in her book, the book she was going to use for showing people what she could do. For when she started up her own business. Super Suppers.

She started coring the green peppers.

Kyra jumped until the timer fell off the shelf.

“KYRA c”

Kyra seized her moment and ran.

Next door on one side, Bob Mitchell was cleaning his car. He saw Kyra and turned the hose slowly, slowly towards her but she knew he wouldn’t really soak her. She stuck out her tongue. Mel was shutting the gate of the house opposite.

“Hello, Mel.”

“Hi, Kyra.”

“You look ever so nice.”

“Thanks, babe.”

“I got a new hair scrunchy Mel.”

“Cool. OK then, babe, see ya.”

“See ya, Mel.”

Mel was sixteen and looked like a model. Kyra’s mother had said she’d kill for Mel’s legs.

Ed’s car wasn’t in the drive. Kyra wandered up the front path, hesitated, then went round the back. Maybe c

But Ed wasn’t in. She’d known really.

She tapped on the back door and waited just in case, but there wasn’t any point. She wandered back. Bob Mitchell had gone in. There was nobody. Not even a cat.

Natalie put the foil-wrapped fish into the oven and washed her hands. Kyra slipped in through the door like grease.

“Told you,” Natalie said. She picked up the apple-shaped timer from the floor and turned it to thirty-five minutes, before going to watch the news.

Four

“You have to understand,” Cat Deerbon said.

“Lizzie isn’t going anywhere. I’m fine, I can manage.”

“Then why did you call me?”

Max Jameson stood at the far end of the long room, looking up at the floor-to-ceiling photograph of his wife. Lizzie herself was curled on the sofa under a blanket, sleeping after Cat had given her a sedative.

“I know how hard this is, Max, believe me. You feel you’ve failed.”

“No, I don’t. I haven’t failed.”

“All right, you feel that by letting her go into the hospice you willhave failed. But this is bad and it is going to get worse.”

“So you’ve told me.”

“If this were an easier place to live in c”

“It’s the place she loves. She’s happy here, she’s never been so happy.”

“Do you think she still is? Can’t you see how frightening it is for her? This huge space, those stairs, the height when she looks down from the bedroom c the slippery floors, the way the chrome shines in the kitchen, in the bathroom. Brightness is painful to her now, it actually hurts her.”

“So they’d keep her in the dark, would they? At this hospice? It would be like going into prison.”

Cat was silent. She had been with Max Jameson for forty minutes. When she had arrived, he had wept on her shoulder. Lizzie had been sick again and was sitting in the middle of the floor, where she had fallen, her leg bent under her. Amazingly, she was only shocked, not seriously hurt.

“But how long before she falls down those stairs head first? Is that the way you want her life to end?”

“Do you know c” Max turned to Cat and smiled. He was a tall man and had been handsome but now he was haggard with anxiety and fear. His face had sunken inwards and his shaved head had a blue sheen. “c I don’t actually want her life to end at all.”

“Of course you don’t.”

He walked slowly towards Cat, but then veered away again to return to the wall with the photograph.

“You think she’s gaga, don’t you?”

“I would never, ever use that expression about anyone.”

“OK, what would you say she was?” He was angry.

“The illness has reached her brain now and she is very confused, though there may be flashes of awareness. She is also very frightened for most of the time—fear is a symptom of variant CJD at this stage. I want Lizzie to be in a place of safety so that she has as little to frighten her as possible. She also needs physical care. Her bodily functions are no longer under her control. The ataxia will increase so she will fall over all the time, she has no motor c”

Max Jameson screamed, a terrible howl of pain and rage, his hands pressed to his head.

Lizzie woke and began to cry like a baby, struggling to sit up. He went on bellowing, an animal sound.

“Max, stop that,” Cat said quietly. She went to Lizzie and took her hand, encouraging her to lie down under the blanket again. The young woman’s eyes were wide with fear and also with the blankness of someone who has no sense of their surroundings, of other people or even of their own selves. All was a terrifying confusion.

The room was quiet. In the street below someone went by whistling.

“Let me make the call,” Cat said.

After a long pause, Max nodded.

It had been less than three months since Lizzie Jameson had come to the surgery. She had been walking too carefully, as if afraid she might lose her balance, and her speech had seemed slow. Cat only remembered seeing her once before, on a birth-control matter, but had been struck then by her vibrant beauty and her laugh; she had scarcely recognised the unhappy young woman coming into her room.

It was not difficult to diagnose severe depression but neither Cat nor Lizzie herself could find a cause. She was very happy, Lizzie said, no, there was nothing wrong with her marriage, nor with anything else. Work had been going well—she was a graphic designer—she loved the apartment in the Old Ribbon Factory, loved Lafferton, had had no shocks or illness.

“Every day I wake up it’s blacker. It’s like sliding down a pit.” She had stared at Cat hollow-eyed but there had been no tears.

Cat had prescribed an antidepressant and asked to see her weekly for the next six weeks to follow her progress.

Nothing had changed for over a month. The tablets had barely touched the surface of her misery. But on the fourth visit, Lizzie had presented with a badly bruised arm, and a dislocated finger where she had tried to stop herself falling. She had just lost her balance, she said.

“Has this happened before?”

“It keeps happening. I suppose it might be the tablets.”

“Hm. Possibly. They can cause mild dizziness but it usually passes within a few days.”

Cat had got her an appointment with the neurologist at Bevham General. That night she had talked to Chris.

“Brain tumour,” he had said at once. “The MRI will show more clearly.”

“Yes. Could be very deep.”

“Parkinson’s?”

“That crossed my mind.”

“Or maybe the two things are unconnected c look at the depression and the lack of balance separately.”

They had gone on to talk of something else, but the following morning Chris had crossed the corridor from his own consulting room to Cat’s.

“Lizzie Jameson c”

“Idea?”

“How was her gait?”

“Unsteady.”

“I just looked up variant CJD.”

Cat had stared at him. “It’s very rare,” she’d said finally.

“Yes. I’ve never seen it.”

“Nor have I.”

“But it checks out.”

After her last patient left Cat had put in a call to the Bevham neurologist.

Max Jameson had been widowed five years before meeting Lizzie. His first wife had died of breast cancer. There had been no children.

“I was mad,” he had said to Cat. “I was crazy. I wanted to be dead. I wasdead, I was the walking dead. It was just a question of getting through the days and wondering why I bothered.”