She was still surprised to wake up every morning next to a man. This man. He was a neat sleeper, curled in a foetal position all night, far over on his side of their new emperor-sized bed. Patrick understood, without her having to explain, that she needed a lot of space for her restless sleep.

He had been amused that the brooding presence ofBridget in the bedroom down the hall had made sex a complete non-starter as far as Louise was concerned. Presumably he had done it with Samantha within earshot of his sister. Louise imagined Samantha was probably docile in extremis. Patrick certainly was, giving out nothing much more than a discreet but complimentary kind ofmoan. Louise was a bit of a howler.

Sex between them was good but it didn't tear up the carpet, it wasn't ravenous. Not fornication but lovemaking. Louise had always considered that 'lovemaking' was a euphemistic kind of word for something that was an animal instinct but this was clearly not a belief shared by Patrick. The marriage bed was holy, he said, and this from a godless man, although a godless Irishman which was almost a contradiction in terms.

At first she'd thought there was a considerable charm in their civilized coupling, she'd stewed in enough sweaty, feral encounters in her time, but now she was beginning to wonder. If she ever kissed jackson it would be the end ofdecency and good manners. A pair of tigers roaring in the night. Not last night in the hospital, that had been a chaste kiss for an invalid. If they ever kissed properly they would exchange breath, they would exchange souls. Never think about one man in another man's bed, especially ifthe man in the bed is your husband. Height of bad manners, Louise. Bad wife. Very bad wife.

She watched the clock tick over to five fifty-six and slipped quietly out ofbed. Patrick didn't normally wake until seven but Bridget and Tim were early birds and Louise didn't think she could face polite conversation with either of them at this hour of the morning. Or, God forbid, another breakfast enfamille. Still, she was determined that for the rest of their visit she would bite her tongue, bite it off if necessary, and be as polite as Mrs Polite Well-Mannered. The bitch was muzzled.

She put in her contacts and peered at herself in the mirror of the en-suite. She still looked exhausted -she was exhausted -but at the same time she felt overwhelming relief at the idea that she had to go to work today and not play at being a hostess.

The memory hit her ofjackson lying in the hospital bed, beaten up and mauled, down and out for the count. He was the kind who always got back up but, of course, one day he wouldn't. Why was he always in the wrong place at the wrong time? She could imagine him saying, Maybe it was the right place at the right time. He was the most annoying person, even in her imagination.

He had looked so vulnerable lying there in that hospital bed. The king sits in Dunfermline toun, drinking the blude-red wine.

The Fisher King, sick and emasculated, the land wasting around him. Did you have to bring the king back to life to restore the land or did you have to sacrifice him? She couldn't remember. Blood Sacrifice, that was the title of Martina Appleby's anthology of poems. She wrote under her maiden name, not the ill-fated 'Mason'. Louise had googled her and come up with a brief paragraph. Howard Mason had called her 'my muse'. For a while anyway. In a barely disguised roman aclif, she became Ingegerd, 'the gloomy Scandinavian millstone around his neck, pulling him under the water'. Not a great one for inventive metaphor, our Howard. Now Martina was out of print. They were all out of print. Every single one of them. Except Joanna.

She tiptoed around the house, thought about making coffee, decided against it as being too noisy.

Hobbled by her hangover, Louise didn't quite make the great escape. Just as she was buttoning up her coat, good old Bridget wafted downstairs -in an inflammatory orange-coloured satin dressing gown -and said, 'Off to work already?' and Louise said, 'No rest for the wicked, or the police.'

'Don't worry, I'll look after Patrick,' Bridget said and Louise -inlaw to outlaw at the flick of a switch -growled, 'I'm not worried, he's fifty-two years old, he can look after himself.'The bitch was out.

The flats shared an underground garage and as Louise was emerging she almost ran over the postman, bringing a Special Delivery, another volume of Howard Mason's oeuvre that she'd found on the net. She signed for it, stuck it in the glove compartment and drove away.

This time she didn't go in the fancy front door but took the path that went along the side of the house and led to the back door. It took her past the garage, through the window of which she could see Dr Hunter's virtuous Prius, just as Reggie had said. Louise had parked on the main road on Tuesday, waiting for Joanna Hunter to come in from work. She had watched her car turn into the driveway, watched her corning home and wondered what it must be like to be the one that got away. ('Guilty,' Joanna Hunter said. 'Every day I feel guilty.')

'Me again,' Louise said cheerfully when Neil Hunter opened the door. He seemed more dishevelled in every way than yesterday.

'Do you know what time it is?'

Louise looked at her watch and said, 'Ten to seven,' like a helpful Girl Guide. Early morning -best time for rousing drug dealers, terrorists and the innocent husbands of caring GPs. Louise never even made it to being a Guider, she was kicked out of the Brownies at age seven. It was funny because she thought of herself as a good team player, although sometimes she suspected that no one else on her team did. ('Not a team player, a team leader, boss,' Karen Warner said diplomatically.)

'I said I'd be back,' she said, the queen of reason, to Neil Hunter.

'So you did.' He rubbed the stubble on his chin and stared at her absently for a moment. He didn't look in good fettle. Perhaps he was one of those men who needed a wife to keep his life ticking along (quite a lot of those about).

'I suppose you want to come in?' he said. He squashed himself against the doorpost so she had to squeeze past him. Just a little bit too close to Louise's perimeter fence. He smelled of drink and cigarettes and looked as if he'd been up all night, which was not as unattractive as it should have been. You wouldn't kick him out of your bed. If you weren't married that is, and he wasn't married, and there wasn't an outside chance that he'd somehow done away with his wife. Crazy talk, Louise.

'I noticed Dr Hunter's car is in the garage,' Louise said. 'It's dead, must be the electronics. I'm taking it in tomorrow to be fixed. Jo hired a car to go down to Yorkshire.' 'I've called Dr Hunter a couple of times, but haven't been able to get an answer,' Louise said. She hadn't, but hey. 'She does have her phone with her doesn't she?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Perhaps you could give me her aunt's phone number and address.'

'Her aunt?'

'Mnl.'

He put his fingers to his temple and thought for a few seconds before saying, 'I think it's in the study,' and reluctantly leaving the room as if setting off on a particularly challenging quest.

When he'd disappeared into the innards of the house a phone, a mobile, started to ring. It was somewhere close by but the sound was mumed as if the phone was buried. Louise traced the ringing to the drawer in the big kitchen table. When she pulled the drawer open, music suddenly escaped into the air. It sounded vaguely like Bach but it was too obscure for Louise to identifY. Thanks to Patrick, she recognized a lot now but could only name a few obvious pieces Beethoven's Fifth, bits of Swan Lake, Carmina Burana -'Classic lite,' according to Patrick. He was a serious opera fan as well, he particularly liked the ones that Louise didn't. She was 'a populist', he laughed, because she only liked the big heartbreak arias. She had a Maria Callas CD, a 'Best of' compilation, in the car that she played a lot although she wasn't sure it was necessarily a healthy choice of in-car entertainment.