Jane got up. Humour, she had decided long ago, humour works. Occasionally. But nothing remotely funny came to her.

It was dusk by the time she left London. The sky was feathered with blackberry cloud as she headed west. Scott Joplin came from the CD player. She had seen the police, sorted out the house as best she could, bought groceries and some sweet-scented stocks to bring fresh life to a house that felt tainted. She turned her mind away from thoughts of her mother alone again there, working as usual in her garden study among a drift of papers and cigar ash. She would be fine. She was a strong woman. It was astonishing that any burglar had got the better of her. Her mother c

But her mother, for the first time in Jane’s life, had become vulnerable and the idea left her confused and anxious, half afraid, half irritated. How dare she? she thought, moving into the centre lane and picking up speed. How dare she do this to me?

The piano plinked out its jazz, faultless, confident. The memory of her father blinded her with unexpected tears.

Ten

“Can she see me?”

The nurse hesitated.

“Can she hear me?”

“She may c hearing is the c yes, she may.”

“Hearing is the what? What?”

Alarm flickered on her face.

Max Jameson had shouted. He was angry. He had spoken as if it was the nurse’s fault and it was not, but he could not apologise. “What? Please don’t pretend to me.”

“Hearing is the last sense to go, that was all I was going to say. So she may hear you c always assume that she can. That’s the best way.”

But when he looked at Lizzie, who might hear him or might not, he could think of nothing to say.

Lizzie. Already this was not Lizzie.

He saw that the nurse was looking at him with such sweetness, such concern, that he wanted to lay his head on her breast, take her comfort. She wiped Lizzie’s forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water.

“Can she feel that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have to go outside. Can I go into the garden?”

“Of course. It’s lovely there. Peaceful.”

“I don’t want peace.”

He stood in the hot little dying room trying to speak, but only breath came. He stumbled to the door.

It had been three days and three nights and terrible to watch and still his wife would not die. Lizzie.

He sat on a bench. He wished he smoked. That would have been a good excuse. “I need to get out for a cigarette,” not “I need to get away from her dying.”

There was no one else outside. On the right, the new extension building was being finished, the windows still glassless, like eye sockets.

“Can she see?”

It occurred to Max that if he could have known the future, when her illness had begun, he would have killed her then, that it would have been kinder to have killed. His love for her was so great that he could have done it.

The air smelled sweet, of earth and cooling grass, but the next moment, of cigarette smoke. A man had come to sit next to him on the bench. He proffered the packet.

“No, thanks,” Max said.

“No. Well, I didn’t. Gave it up years back. Only you reach for it, you know, first thing you need.”

Don’t talk to me, Max thought, don’t ask and don’t tell.

“Hardest bit, this, isn’t it? Waiting. You feel guilty, like c wishing it was over, dreading it.”

Something flooded through him c Relief? Fear?

“It’s not right. You’ve done everything for them then suddenly you can’t do a bloody thing.”

“Yes.”

“Your mother or what?”

Max stared at the dark ground beneath his feet. His lips felt thick and numb. “Wife,” he heard himself say. “My wife. Lizzie.”

“Fuck it.”

“Right.”

“Daughter, me. Two smashing kids, everything to live for. I’d get into that bed and die for her if I could.”

“Yes,” Max said.

“Cancer?”

“No.”

“Right. Generally is, that’s all.”

“Yes.”

The man put his hand briefly on to Max’s shoulder as he stood up. Said nothing. Went.

It would have been better if he had never met Lizzie, never loved her, never been happy.

Better.

He knew he ought to go back to her.

He sat on alone in the dark garden.

Eleven

Cat Deerbon switched on her torch. The block had a concrete staircase but several of the lights had failed and it was the same along the walkway outside the flats. It was some time since she had been called out here at night. Televisions and sound systems blared through windows, there were raised voices and then patches of silence and blackness, as though people were hunkered down hiding from a storm.

Number 188 was like that. No light from the kitchen window, at the front, or through the glass door panel. A train went by in the distance.

Cat rattled the letter box, waited, and then banged on the glass. A dog began to bark from further along, booming, menacing. She knew the sort of dog it would be.

No one came to the door.

The call had come from an elderly man. He had sounded breathless and distressed, and over the phone she had heard the harsh whistling in his bronchial tubes. She rattled the letter box again, shouted, and then tried the handle, but the door was locked. She moved along the walkway to stand under one of the lights and took out her mobile. As she did so, she heard a slight scuffle, the scrape of a shoe sole, nothing more, and then someone’s arm was round her neck from behind, her wrist was bent backwards and the phone was wrenched out of her hand. Cat swore and kicked out hard, but as she tried to pull away, felt a blow in her lower back which sent her, face down, on to the concrete. Footsteps, soft, sure footsteps, raced away and down the stairs.

The dog’s barking had risen to a fury.

She did not know how long it took her to sit cautiously, checking herself for pain as she moved; but she was no more than bruised and shaken and stood up, reaching out to the ledge for support.

Footsteps up the stairs again, but these were the sharp, confident taps of high heels.

Cat called out.

Ten minutes later, she was sitting on a leather sofa beside a blazing gas fire, her hand shaking as she tried to drink from a mug of tea. Police and ambulance were on their way.

“You shouldn’t be doing calls out here by yourself at night, Doctor, you was lucky it was just your phone. Bloody louts.”

Cat did not know the woman with burgundy fingernails who had been coming home off the late shift at the supermarket, but she was near to tears with gratitude.

“Who was it you was going to see?”

“He lives at 188 c Mr Sumner.”

“Got a hearing aid?”

“I’ve no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”

“No, well, I wouldn’t know his name or anything, you don’t here. Well, some of the young ones do, the mothers with little ones, they all seem to get together, but the rest of us just come and go. Like that now, isn’t it? You sure you’re warm enough, you can get cold having a shock, I read that.”

Cat couldn’t have said that she was too hot and the tea was so sweet she could barely drink it. It didn’t matter. How could it?

The police and paramedics arrived together, boots crunching outside, sending the dog and others in the flats around into a frenzy.

The woman followed Cat and waited as the door of 188 was forced open. The flat was in darkness and smelled acrid. One of the paramedics almost slipped on a patch of vomit. They found Cat’s patient, Arthur Sumner, lying dead in the lavatory.

“Give you a lift home, Doc?”

“I’m fine.”

Fine, she thought, thanking the woman with the burgundy nails, thanking the crews, walking down the concrete staircase and across to her car. Fine. She sat for a moment, head down on the wheel. She would ring Chris, tell him what had happened. Then she remembered that her mobile had been taken, that she had to go into the station tomorrow and make a report, get a new phone, do the paperwork on Arthur Sumner. “Got a hearing aid?”