“What?”

He pushed her slightly.

“Chris?”

“I can’t see properly. It’s like a tunnel. I can see straight ahead but nothing else.”

“Since when?”

“Earlier. I don’t know. I woke up. It was then.” She said nothing because she could find no words. After half an hour she had given him a shot of morphine and stayed until he slept before going back to the computer. Oddly, she had finished the notes and sent them off with complete concentration before checking on a query from the junior locum about a patient he thought had Lyme disease—had Cat ever seen a case of it locally?—and reading several articles in the BMJ. Her mind was hungry for facts and medical information about anything other than brain tumours and work kept her occupied—kept her down stairs, she thought—though the door was ajar and part of her was tuned for any sound from Chris or, as always, the children.

When she came to it was half past one, and Chris was calling.

He was lying on his back, eyes open and shimmering with tears.

“I can’t do this,” he said. “You’d be better at it.”

She took his hand. “I can’t give you another shot just yet but I’ll get you a syringe pump first thing in the morning. You’ll be much more comfortable. I think we should have one of the Imogen House girls come in every day—they’re so much more used to the dosages and everything else.”

“Don’t send me in there.”

She was silent. He had always said that though he had been happy to send patients into the hospice, knew how well they were cared for, knew it was far better than the hospital, he would never want to go there. Cat had not understood and never argued.

“Cat?”

“No. If you want to stay here you’re staying here.”

“Do I have to have one of them come?”

“No. But if you could bear to, it would help. They really do know more than me about c”

“Dying.”

“Yes.”

“It didn’t do any good. Remember that in future. Forget the treatment, it doesn’t do any good.”

“Everyone’s different, you know.”

“Shit, who’s got this thing, you or me? Jesus, you’ve always got to know best, haven’t you? Only you don’t. This time I know fucking best.”

It was happening like this more and more, a sudden spurt of rage and vicious accusations directed at her. It was the tumour talking, she always had to remind herself, it was not Chris. But it was the hardest part. Twice he had turned on Sam and snarled, shouted angrily at Hannah, terrifying her. Seconds later he had fallen asleep or simply forgotten. When Hannah did not want to come and say goodbye to him before she went to school or kiss him goodnight, he was bewildered and upset.

She went into the kitchen. Mephisto was sprawled on the old sofa in a deep sleep and did not stir. The wind had got up. She poured a glass of milk and sat down. Something else was worrying her. She had been sleeping with Chris in their bed until tonight, but he had seemed increasingly disturbed by her and was awake or restless so that she wasn’t getting much sleep. The children had enough without having her tired and irritable. But how could she tell Chris that she was moving out? Perhaps she could indicate that she needed a good sleep “just tonight” and then “just another night” until it became permanent. The spare room was next door to theirs and she could leave both doors ajar.

But something practical and even necessary had a finality about it which she could not face. This was not only about her getting sleep. It was about nothing ever being normal again, about never sharing their bed again, about the end of everything. I have not been a good doctor, she thought now, because this is something that has never occurred to me and which not one single patient who has had to face it has ever talked to me about. Perhaps there is nothing to say, perhaps it is simply unbearable and impossible to put into words, tell someone else, express at all?

There was a sound. She went to the foot of the stairs and listened. Nothing. Then again.

Chris was sitting up, his arm stretched out to the bedside lamp which was lying on the floor. Seeing him, his head shaved on one side, his face and body thin, his eyes full of bewilderment, Cat thought, I cannot do this. I don’t know how to be here any longer. And was ashamed and angry with herself, as she restored the lamp, settled Chris down again as she would one of the children, smoothing his forehead, murmuring to him. He had not been fully awake or aware, the morphine was still having its effect.

She went into the children’s rooms. Felix, as ever, was sleeping on his face with his bottom in the air. Sam was curled neatly, his Alex Rider book open under his arm. Hannah’s duvet was on the floor. Cat replaced it and tucked her in. Whatever else was happening in the house, whatever had upset them during the day, they were all blessed with the certainty of sleep.

Her own body was tired but her brain was so wide awake it seemed to be sending out sparks. She settled on the sofa next to Mephisto, who squeezed his claws once or twice. A pile of books were on the floor beside her, books she had been trying to concentrate on for days. Even when she had been at her busiest stretches as a GP she had never left a novel unfinished or taken so long over one as she was now. She picked through them. The latest Ian Rankin. Ruth Rendell. But she couldn’t read about the dark side, violence and distress, nor care who had committed whatever the crimes might be. Barchester Towers. Martin Amis. Both loved, neither right. At the bottom was the huge, heavy novel Chris had bought her at the airport on the way home from Australia because, he had said, “Even you can’t say this one’s too short for the flight.” Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. But she had barely begun it when Felix had been sick and Hannah had been frightened of a bout of turbulence and then it had been food trays and sleep and more sickness, until she had put the novel away and read an old Dorothy L. Sayers someone had left in the magazine pouch of her seat.

“ Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.”

She felt herself sink into the book as into a deep soft bed.

She came to when the cat uncurled himself, leapt softly onto the floor and went out through the catflap, letting in a brief draught of cold air. It was almost three and the house was creaking slightly here and there as the wind got under the floor boards and the roof tiles and around the window frames. Go to bed, she told herself. Now, or you’ll be fit for nothing tomorrow.

She shivered. Did not go to bed but instead picked up the phone which was beside her and pressed 3.

“Serrailler,” he said at once.

“I didn’t wake you then.”

“Hi. No, that was half an hour ago. Some jerk’s running round town in a stolen jeep firing an airgun out of the windows.”

“Nice.”

“Don’t worry, he’s nicked.”

“Why did they ring you?”

“They ring me if a car backfires at the moment. But that’s not why you’re ringing me. What’s wrong?”

“It’s three o’clock.”

“Bleak?”

“Very.”

“Fifteen minutes.”

It was less. He blew in with the wind and came straight to her, holding out his arms. She had no need to say anything. He would have understood if she had gone to sleep but she needed to talk and he simply listened to everything without interruption, passing her a handkerchief, making tea and always listening, listening.

In the end, she sat, drained of words and even of emotions, sipping the tea in exhaustion.

But then she said, remembering, “I’m sorry I got at you the other night. About Dad.”

He shrugged.

“Si, you have to take this on board. He’s happy. Judith is very good for him. Ma would have been pleased, you know. Amazed, but pleased.”

“I know. It isn’t that.”

“You think she’s taking Ma’s place.”