what he’s brought you?’
They dived in in unison.
Martin watched, and then, even though he had done the filling what felt like less than an hour ago, their delight drew him into the excitement of unwrapping. For Benjy, who loved to draw and paint and make things, there were fat round fibre pens in fluorescent colours that fitted into his awkward fist, and scribbling pads with orange and black and purple pages, and colouring books. There were building bricks that snapped together with a satisfying click, and puzzles to colour and cut out himself.
For Thomas, quick-witted and pugnacious, there were pocket quiz games and a miniature robot. There were toys that could be changed into other toys by turning and flipping the right parts, and there was a model aeroplane to slot together that twisted unerringly back to the sender’s hand. For both of the boys there were the space-age death weapons that they coveted, and Martin heartily disapproved of. But he was too absorbed in the burrowing discoveries even to smile at the evidence of Annie’s principles succumbing to her soft heart.
At last the three of them sat back in a drift of discarded paper and packaging, glowing with pleasure.
‘How brilliant,’ Thomas observed, sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction. Then he remembered, and a shadow crossed his face. ‘I wish Mum was here.’
Martin put his arm around him. ‘She will be,’ he promised him, ‘before long. She was much better last night. I’ll be able to take you to see her soon.’
The shadow lifted.
‘And then I’ll be able to zap her with my new gamma gun.’
‘And I will,’ Benjy chipped in.
‘Go on,’ Martin said. ‘Zap into your own rooms. I’m going to make a cup of tea for Granny and Grandpa, and tell them about Mummy.’
He waded through the debris with the boys hopping and firing around him.
It’s all right, he reminded himself. It’s going to be all right.
He opened the curtains, and saw that the light was just breaking on Christmas morning.
Christmas Day was exactly as Steve had imagined it would be. The women from the opposite ward who were well enough to walk came in in their pink and turquoise housecoats and wished each of them a merry Christmas. They were followed by flurries of other visitors, from the hospital padre who came with the hospital choir to sing carols, to the consultants, some of them with their wives and children. The smaller children were obviously bored and ran up and down the ward, sliding on the polished floor. After the doctors came a television crew, to film the bomb victims’ Christmas celebrations.
At what felt to Steve like just after breakfast, but was in fact the dot of noon, the Christmas dinner was wheeled in. The accident unit consultant carved the turkey from a trolley in the middle of the ward and the nurses swished to and fro with plates. They brought wine too, from Steve’s impromptu cellar, to add to the glow from the morning’s surreptitious consumption. After his dinner the old newsvendor lay back against his pillows with a smile of beatific contentment and fell noisily asleep.
At the start of the afternoon visiting the families came trooping in one after the other, wives and children and grandparents, to make a rowdy circle round each of the beds.
When he heard the click, click of very high heels Steve knew who it was before he looked up.
Cass was wearing the fur coat she had bought on an assignment in Rome. The pelts had been shaved and clipped and dyed until they looked nothing like fur at all, and they were only reminiscent of animals because of the tails that swung like tassels at the shoulders. A fur hat was tilted down over her eyes so that almost nothing was visible of her face except her scarlet lipstick. Cass had adopted her dressed-up look, as striking and as unreal as a magazine cover. Her entrance had an electrifying effect. The family parties turned round to stare for a long minute. Cass stood beside Steve’s bed and looked down at him.
‘Hello.’
‘Cass,’ he said. ‘And on Christmas Day, too.’ He was trying to remember the last time he had seen her, but he couldn’t. Months ago, now. How many months?
Cass shrugged off her furs. She was wearing a tube of cream-coloured cashmere underneath it. It looked as smooth and silky as the pelt of a Siamese cat, emphasizing her resemblance to one. Steve knew that her eyes had the same intriguing smoky depth as a cat’s because Cass was short-sighted, and too vain to wear spectacles.
‘You look well,’ he said, and caught himself smiling inwardly at the bathetic understatement. Cass was, as always, perfectly beautiful.
‘That’s more than I can say for you.’
‘Thanks.’
She swayed forward and sat on the edge of the bed. Her legs under the short knitted hemline were very long and smooth in pale stockings.
‘Oh, darling, I didn’t mean that. I meant that it looks as though it was grim.’
‘It’s all right. I know what you meant.’
There it was, confronting them already, Steve thought. Their almost deliberate inability to understand the first thing about each other. It was hard to believe that this pretty girl with her wide, unfocused eyes had ever been his wife.
She looked around now, and shivered a little. ‘Ugh. I hate hospitals. How are you bearing it?’
‘Oh, I can bear it. I lie here and listen to people talking. Watch the nurses. There’s one very watchable redhead. I think, and sleep. There are worse things.’
Cass laughed and re-crossed her legs. ‘I can’t think of very many. Poor love.’
Steve was thinking that he found her just as attractive in just the same way as when he had first met her. If she was lying down beside him he would run his hand from the hollow of her waist over the satiny hummock of her hips. He knew how she would sigh with satisfaction, her wide-set eyes fixed dreamily on his.
Steve shifted uncomfortably under the bedclothes, feeling the heavy weight of the plaster encasing his leg.
‘Is your leg hurting?’ Cass asked innocently.
‘No. Not my leg.’ She heard the note in his voice and she laughed, pleased with the effect she created. Yet he had hardly known her, Steve reflected. Any more than Cass had known him. Annie and he knew one another intimately, and he had done no more than hold her hand and cradle her head to try to comfort her.
Watching him, Cass asked sharply, ‘Has Vicky been in to see you?’
‘Vicky? Yes, she came the day before yesterday. When they lifted the next-of-kin-only restriction. She’s gone home to Norfolk for Christmas now.’
Cass pouted a little. ‘Why did you have to name Bob Jefferies as your next of kin? It made it look as if you didn’t have anyone else.’
Steve sighed. ‘I couldn’t have named you, my love, could I? We haven’t seen each other for months. I didn’t even know if you were in the country.’
‘I was here. I would have come right away.’ Cass picked up his hand and bent her head, looking at their
