Which she was, and not just by me. While my attention had been fixed first of all on the package I’d left and then on her, others had gathered around the outskirts of the park, still beyond the railings but getting dangerously close. I saw one tall, dark-clad figure approach, then another. I couldn’t be sure, but there might even have been movement at the far side of the park. She was surrounded.

‘Look out!’

I had no idea whether she heard me. I was some distance away and had the noise of London to contend with. I switched on the torch I’d brought, waving it around my head. ‘Run!’ I screamed.

Whether she did or not, I had no idea. But I ran. Back into the house, down the stairs, out through the front door and along the street. I had my radio in my hand, was shouting out my need for urgent assistance. I got to the back of the street, scared to breathe in case I smelled smoke, or worse. At the park gates I looked inside to see – nothing. Even the package I’d left had gone.

As the sirens drew close, I ran round the perimeter of the playground, looking out across the playing fields for any sign of the woman in black or her pursuers. They’d vanished. As I reached the gates again I heard a car pull up and doors slam. Now I had some explaining to do.

15

I DIDN’T STAY home that night. After uniform had searched the playground and the surrounding sports fields and found nothing, I waited over an hour in case the woman in black turned up. She didn’t, and it looked as though she might have been scared away for good. So I did what I’d vowed many times I wouldn’t do and had told myself repeatedly that I couldn’t do. I drove across town and parked near the Chelsea and Westminster hospital.

He was asleep, which was a huge relief and a massive disappointment at the same time. The door to the small private room whooshed along the tiles as I pushed it open and I held my breath, but Joesbury’s chest was rising and falling noticeably and his breathing was louder than anyone conscious would be comfortable with. Not snoring, more of a protracted wheeze.

He’d shrunk. Where was the man who always seemed so much bigger than his body? Partly the change was due to the fact that he was, unmistakably, thinner. Also, lying prone, he didn’t seem so tall. The scar around his right eye, the one I carried no blame for because he’d had it when he met me, was red and livid against his pale skin. The one I had caused, above his right lung, was hidden from view, but beneath the thin fabric of his grey pyjama top I could see the outline of bandages and dressings.

His suntan had gone completely. His eyelashes were long and thick on his sallow cheeks and I found myself dreading that he’d open his eyes and that they’d no longer be the vivid turquoise I remembered.

There was a Christmas tree on the cupboard by his bed, a small plastic model with blue and white silk baubles and several homemade decorations. Get well soon, Daddy, said the card in front of it.

I sat down beside him, hardly knowing what I’d say if he woke. I wasn’t even sure why I was here. All I knew was that I’d spent several days now thinking about a woman who was grieving for the man she loved, and it had finally dawned on me that I was doing exactly the same thing.

Except the man I loved was still here. Still living and breathing, and likely to continue to do so. What would she give, the woman in black, to be in my shoes right now?

Wishing my hands were warmer, I closed my fingers around his. He sighed in his sleep, and seemed about to move, but then a look of pain crossed his face and he gave up the effort.

I don’t know how long I sat beside him before I fell asleep. I hadn’t planned to stay more than a minute or two, but the room was so warm, the sound of his breathing beside me so surprisingly soothing, and the padded armchair had a headrest at just the right height.

I woke to the sound of a trolley outside. Nurses, with meds. Knowing he’d wake for sure if they came in, I pulled my hand out from beneath his and got up. Sometime, while I’d been asleep, my hand had slipped inside his, rather than the other way round. I took one last second to let my finger hover a millimetre above his lips, tracing their outline. I almost, I think, bent down to brush my own lips over his, but his breathing was lighter now and I knew he was very close to waking up. I backed to the door. His eyelids were flickering. Any second now. I couldn’t even risk whispering goodbye.

‘Thank God you lived,’ I mouthed, before slipping out.

16

I ARRIVED HOME with a Chinese takeaway, from the restaurant Mark Joesbury had taken me to the night we’d met. Call me hopelessly sentimental if you want, it just felt appropriate. What with the hot food, a handbag, a couple of carrier bags from my supermarket trip, not to mention keys, I had no hands free to switch on lights. I dumped the food on the kitchen counter and carried on. From my bedroom I can see through a small conservatory directly into the garden beyond.

Of course, had the lights been on I almost certainly wouldn’t have seen the figure in the garden, but due to the dark interior, the moving shape stood out against the moonlit snow. She was back. And she was here.

Shocked and surprisingly scared, I stood frozen to the spot, wondering if I’d locked the conservatory door. I was sure I had – I always do – but it’s a question you ask, isn’t it, when someone who really shouldn’t be in your back garden has their attention fixed intently, almost hungrily, on you?

Each time I’d seen the woman in black up till now, she’d inspired my interest and sympathy. Up close, she was frightening. At a distance, the black of her robes had seemed to intensify against the snow. Close up, it was a different matter entirely. Just yards away from me, the blackness of her seemed to lose substance, no longer solid against a white background, but empty. I looked at where black fabric should be and saw nothing. It was as though the woman in black were sucking away the world and leaving a void in its place. For the first time, I began to feel afraid of her, to wonder if this really were the vulnerable, grieving woman I’d conjured in my head.

For one thing, those eyes, the only part of her I could see clearly, were just so intense. Catching the light from somewhere, maybe from the flat above me, they were gleaming, and the expression was one I simply couldn’t read.

The plan, so far as I’d had one, had been to approach her quietly when she showed up, to welcome her inside, encourage her to tell her story, to hold her hand as we went together to the police station. None of that seemed possible right now.

But someone had to move, because the longer we stood and stared at each other, the harder it became to break the deadlock. Yet still she continued to stand there, as though someone had dropped a life-size granite statue into my garden.

Looked like it was going to be me, then.

I reached for the door that led to the conservatory. At the same moment, she stepped back and faded into the gloom.

‘Wait!’ I called out. By the time I reached the back door, I couldn’t see her.

I opened the door, but stayed within the psychological shelter of its frame, still feeling the need for the protection of my own home. I could see nothing of the woman. When I was certain she was no longer close, I stepped outside.

It wasn’t possible. She could not have vanished. My garden was white with snow. Except it wasn’t really, not now that I was out there. The snow-covered jasmine that scaled the wall to my right was washed orange by a nearby streetlight, and the moonlight had spun a path of pale gold which ran from one corner of the garden to its opposite diagonal. The white of the snow had become silver, even blue, in places, and the dark and shadowy corners had, in contrast, become deeper and gloomier.