left, remember?’
Cass turned her head further, so that a wing of creamy-blonde hair fell and hid her face. Further down the ward someone had turned on the radio. It was a recording of the Nine Lessons and Carols, and they heard the achingly high notes of a boy soprano.
‘Steve, I …’
He moved quickly, knowing that he couldn’t listen. He opened his hand and let her fingers fall back on to the bedcover.
‘Bob came. Bod did everything that was necessary, which wasn’t a lot.’
Cass turned her face squarely to him then, and he read the mixture of hurt and irritation in it. Just as there had always been, almost from the very beginning. ‘It’s no good, is it?’ she asked. He wanted to reach out and touch her then, but he knew that he shouldn’t do that either. There was no point in beginning again, because there was nowhere that he and Cass could go together.
‘No,’ Steve said at last, and the word fell into the stillness between them.
After a moment Cass looked up brightly. ‘Well. I’m not going to dash off at once, having come all the way in here. Let’s talk. What shall we talk about?’
‘Tell me what you’ve been doing.’
She launched into a spirited listing of her bookings and her travels to assignments. She had been to New York for six weeks, to Singapore, and to Rome and Sicily. She was busy and successful, and she was still moving in the same fashionable world that she and Steve had once moved in together. At last, however, she ran out of bright anecdotes and they looked at one another again in silence.
In a different voice Cass said abruptly, ‘You look so wretched. Why don’t you talk about what happened?’
‘It happened. I don’t remember all that much about it. Except that it hurt, and it was very dark.’
He longed to talk to Annie about it. No one else.
‘I saw the news pictures on television.’ Cass shuddered. ‘Before I knew you were there. There was someone trapped with you, wasn’t there?’
‘Yes. A woman. We talked, to keep each other company. It made it easier.’
It was impossible to say any more. Somehow Cass understood that.
‘I’m sorry,’ Steve said. ‘I’m very tired.’
She stood up at once and slung her fur coat over her shoulder so that the animals’ tails swished to and fro.
‘I know. I’ll go now. I didn’t even bring you a present, did I?’
Steve grinned crookedly at that. ‘No need. Everyone in the business has sent things. Half the stock of Harrods.’
Cass laughed. ‘I can imagine.’ It was the first completely natural note that they had struck between them, and they smiled at each other. Suddenly Cass leaned forward and kissed him, her hair falling against his cheek. Steve was reminded vividly of the night she left him. Cass in her black lace bra and French knickers. He put his hand up to hold her head down to his and kissed her in return. It was Cass who eased herself away in the end.
‘Behave yourself.’
‘No option, in this plaster.’
Cass sketched a model’s little pouting gesture of mock-disappointment. It was all right, Steve thought. They had steered themselves safely through the visit. Cass pulled the fur cloud of her hat down over her forehead.
‘Goodbye, my love.’
‘Goodbye, Cass.’
Her confident, graceful walk set the tails swinging around her. She didn’t look back from the doors.
The old newsvendor leant forward as soon as they had closed behind her.
‘Who was that, son?’
‘My ex-wife.’
He chuckled throatily. ‘Didn’t look all that ex to me.’
Steve laughed. ‘Appearances can be deceptive, Frankie. Especially with Cass.’
‘Well.’ The old man settled himself down gain. ‘I wouldn’t say no myself, I can tell you that much.’
Steve looked around the ward. It had the appearance of the end of a party, with empty chairs abandoned at odd angles, strewn wrapping paper, one or two lingering guests. The smell of cigar smoke drifted in from the day room. Steve was smiling when he closed his eyes. He fell asleep at once.
The lights overhead were clear now. Annie could see the line of rectangles with the neon tubes more brightly defined behind the opaque glass. She knew the faces of each of her nurses, and the eight-hour cycles that governed their appearances made sense because she could see a big, white-faced clock on the wall opposite her bed. The Irish male nurse called Brendan was on duty now. Annie liked him best, because his touch was light and he never hurt her when he changed her dressings or slid a needle into her skin. She watched him in his white jacket as he took a reading from a scale beside her and wrote a figure on one of his charts at the foot of her bed. Behind him Annie could see the senior nurse sitting at her desk on the raised platform in the middle of the room.
Brendan finished what he was doing and leant over her. ‘There you are, my love,’ he said. ‘That’s that for another hour. Are you comfortable?’
She could move her head just enough to make a little nod. She tried to smile at him too, feeling the quivering in her swollen lips.
‘That’s my girl,’ Brendan said. He stood still for a moment with his head to one side. Then he said, ‘Listen, can you hear?’
It was a long way off, but she could hear it. It was people singing, a warm and familiar sound. It was a Christmas carol. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing. The sound of Christmas Day.
‘Ah, that’s beautiful,’ Brendan sighed. ‘Our hospital choir, it is. As good as anything you hear on the radio.’
Annie wished that Martin were there to hear it too. He had been sitting beside her bed earlier, but he had leant over to kiss her and then he had gone away. She liked it when he was there. Sometimes he talked, telling her little, ordinary things about the boys and the house. At other times he sat in companionable silence, and that was comforting because it was tiring to listen. It was only when he held her hand that Annie felt uncomfortable. She wanted the other man to be there, then. Steve. The man who had held her hand in the dark. The thought puzzled her, and she turned herself away from it.
Annie lay and listened to the singing until she couldn’t hear it any more. Then she let the warm wave of drowsiness take hold of her again. Sleep was so safe, except when the dreams came.
A week later, in the absurdly early hospital morning, Steve was sitting in the armchair beside his bed. He had been up for several days now.
They had hauled him out of bed and given him crutches that fitted under his elbows, then helped him to stand upright. There was a little knob embedded in the heel of his leg plaster. When he was ready to take the first awkward, swaying steps with the crutches, he was allowed to rest it on the floor to balance himself.
