Текст книги "What a cave up!"

Автор книги: Джонатан Коу

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Fiona asked if he could recommend somewhere for us to have lunch, and he mentioned the name of a pub. ‘It’ll be full up, mind, but the landlord’s a friend of mine, so if you just mention my name they might find you a corner. Tell them Norman sent you. I shouldn’t waste much time about it, either, if I was you. Come on and I’ll point you in the right direction.’

We thanked him and, once he had finished dressing and had repacked the towel carefully in his knapsack, followed him up to the road.

‘Crikey, what a lovely bike,’ said Fiona, as soon as she saw it at close quarters. ‘Cannondale, isn’t it?’

‘D’you like it? This is its maiden voyage. It was a present from my eldest: they sprang it on me this morning. I do know a thing or two about bikes – been riding them all my life, you see – and I reckon this one ought to be a beauty. Only weighs about half as much as my old Raleigh: here, look at this, I can lift it up with one hand.’

‘How does it feel on the road?’

‘Well, not as nifty as I was expecting, funnily enough. I’ve come from a little way out of town and it’s a bit of a climb. I was finding it quite hard going.’

‘That’s odd.’ Fiona knelt down and started to examine the back wheel. I looked on, bemused.

‘You’d think with seven gears I wouldn’t have any problem at all, wouldn’t you?’

She peered even more intently at a cluster of very intimidating-looking cogs and ratchets at the centre of the wheel. ‘You know, you might have the wrong sort of cassette on here,’ she said. ‘If this is designed for racing then the ratios may be too high for you. It’s all to do with the cadence. This’ll be designed for about ninety r.p.m. and you’re probably doing nearer seventy-five.’

Norman looked worried. ‘Is that serious, then?’

‘Not really. You’re in luck, because you’ve got individually replaceable sprockets. You’ll need a chain whip and a lockring remover, and then you can do it yourself.’ She stood up. ‘Well, it’s just a hunch.’

‘You can have a ride if you like,’ said Norman. ‘See what you think.’

‘Can I? Gosh, that would be a treat.’ She turned the bike round and swung herself into the saddle. ‘I’ll just go up to the roundabout and back, shall I?’

‘Whatever you like.’

We both watched as she pedalled off down the road, uncertainly at first, then gathering speed and confidence. She receded from view until the only distinct feature was her windswept trail of copper hair.

‘Getting a good bit of speed up, there,’ said Norman.

‘She’s an old hand,’ I said, surprised at the pride I took in being able to tell him this. ‘Did a forty-mile sponsored ride a couple of months ago.’

‘Well’ – he winked at me in a manly, confidential sort of way – ‘you’re a lucky bugger, that’s all I can say. No wonder you don’t want to share her with anybody else on a day like this. She’s a cracker.’

‘That’s not really why we’re here.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. We came down for … well, for health reasons, I suppose you’d call it.’ The urge to confide in someone was suddenly strong. ‘I’m so worried, I couldn’t begin to tell you. We’ve been trying to get some sense out of the doctors, but it’s been going on for months: fevers, night sweats, dreadful sore throats. I just thought a change of scene might do some good – you know, sea air, and all that sort of thing. She’d never say anything about it, but it’s been tearing us both apart; and if it turns out to be something serious, I don’t know how I’d cope, I really don’t.’

‘Aye, well.’ Norman sighed, looking away, and shuffled his feet in embarrassment. ‘I didn’t like to say anything, but now you’ve mentioned it, you do look bloody terrible.’ And just before Fiona cruised back into earshot, he added: ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t wear you out, eh?’

∗

We tried our luck at the pub he’d recommended. The dining area was very hot, very full, and very stuffy, but when we mentioned Norman’s name the landlord did indeed manage to find us a table in the corner, boxed in by a family party of eight, all of them highly boisterous except for a lanky teenager with a streaming cold. He could never quite get to his handkerchief in time, and whenever he sneezed I could see the fine droplets of saliva flying in our direction. We passed on the first course and went straight on to the turkey, which was dry, thinly sliced to the point of transparency, and served with a small mountain of waterlogged vegetables.

‘How come you know all that stuff about bicycles, then?’ I asked Fiona, as she made her first brave inroads into this daunting confection. ‘You were coming across like a real expert.’

She had her mouth full of sprout and turkey, and was unable to answer at first.

‘I did an abstract of some articles about new gear systems just a couple of weeks ago,’ she said, and then embarked upon some serious chewing. ‘I’ve got a good memory for that sort of thing: don’t ask me why.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought it fell within your brief.’

‘We have a very wide brief. It’s not just specialist journals: we cover lots of different subjects. Cycling, cybernetics, sexually transmitted diseases, space travel …’

‘Space travel?’

She noticed my sudden interest.

‘Why, is this another little obsession that you’ve been keeping quiet about?’

‘Well, it used to be, I suppose. When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. I know probably every other boy of my age felt the same way but those enthusiasms never really leave you, do they?’

‘Strange,’ she said. ‘I never really thought of you as the macho type.’

‘Macho?’

‘Well, the symbolism of all those rockets isn’t exactly hard to fathom, is it? I’m sure that’s the appeal for the average male: thrusting your way into the unknown regions …’

‘No, that wasn’t how I felt at all. Perhaps this sounds strange, but it was the’ – I cast around for the word, failed to find it, and had to settle for – ‘the lyricism of it, I suppose, that attracted me.’ Fiona seemed unconvinced. ‘Yuri Gagarin was my real hero. Did you ever read his description of what he could see from the rocket while it was in orbit? It’s almost like a poem.’

She laughed incredulously. ‘You’re going to recite it to me now, aren’t you?’

‘Hang on.’ I closed my eyes. It was years since I’d last tried to remember these words. ‘ “The day side of the earth was clearly visible,’ ” I began, and then repeated slowly: ‘ “The coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, big surfaces of water … During the flight I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape. You can see its curvature when looking to the horizon. The view of the horizon is unique and very beautiful. You can see the remarkable change in colour from the light surface of the earth to the completely black sky in which you can see the stars. This dividing line is very thin, just like a belt of film surrounding the earth’s sphere. It’s a delicate blue, and this transition from the blue to the black is very gradual and lovely.” ’

Fiona laid down her knife and fork while I was saying this, and listened with her chin cradled in her hands.

‘I had pictures of him plastered all over my bedroom. I even used to write stories about him. And then the night he died in that plane crash’ – I laughed nervously – ‘and you don’t have to believe this if you don’t want to – but the night he died, I had a dream about him. I dreamed that I was him, plummeting down to earth in this burning plane. And at that stage I hadn’t really given him a thought for years.’ From the blankness of Fiona’s expression, I gathered that she was sceptical about this revelation. So I concluded with an apology: ‘Well, it made an impression on me at the time.’

‘No, I believe you,’ she said. ‘I was just trying to remember something.’ She sat back and gazed at the window, now dotted with spluttering rain. ‘Some time last year, I had to do an abstract of a piece in one of the newspapers. It was about that crash – somebody’s theory about what might have happened, based on new information. You know, post-glasnost, and all that.’

‘What did it say?’

‘I’ve forgotten a lot of it; but the whole thing was pretty indecisive, anyway, I think. Something about another plane, a much larger one, crossing his flight path and creating a lot of turbulence just as he was coming out of the cloud. Throwing him off course.’

I shook my head. ‘My theory’s better than that. Well, it’s the same theory that a lot of people have, actually. The idea is that the Soviet authorities bumped him off, because he’d seen a bit too much of the West and he liked it and he was probably going to defect.’

Fiona smiled: an affectionate but challenging smile.

‘You think you can reduce everything to politics, don’t you, Michael? It makes life so simple for you.’

‘I don’t see what’s simple about it.’

‘Well of course politics can be complicated, I realize that. But I always think there’s something treacherous about that sort of approach. The way it tempts us to believe there’s an explanation for everything, somewhere or other, if only we’re prepared to look hard enough. That’s what you’re really interested in, isn’t it? Explaining things away.’

‘What’s the alternative?’

‘No, that’s not the point. I’m just saying there are other possibilities to be taken into account. Larger ones, even.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as … well, supposing he really did die by accident? Suppose it was circumstance that killed him: nothing more, nothing less. Wouldn’t that be more frightening to face up to than your little conspiracy theory? Or supposing it was suicide. He’d seen things that nobody else had seen, after all – incredibly beautiful things, by the sound of it. Perhaps he never really came back to reality, and this was the culmination of something irrational, some madness which had been burning away inside him– well out of the reach of you and your politics. I don’t suppose you’d like the sound of that much, either.’

‘Well, if you’re determined to get sentimental about it …’

Fiona shrugged. ‘Maybe I am sentimental. But there are dangers in being too dogmatic, you know. Seeing everything in black and white.’ I couldn’t think of an answer to this, and concentrated instead on impaling a trio of spongy peas on the end of my fork. Her next question took me by surprise. ‘When are you going to tell me why you fell out with your mother in that Chinese restaurant?’

I looked up and said: ‘That’s a rather abrupt change of subject.’

‘It’s not a change of subject at all.’

‘I’m not with you,’ I muttered, returning to my food.

‘You’ve been promising to tell me for months. You even wantto tell me: it’s obvious.’ Since no response was forthcoming, she continued to think aloud. ‘What could she have said, to hurt you so badly? So badly that it split you in two. The half that refuses to forgive her because it insists on seeing things in black and white, and the other half – the one you’ve been trying to smother ever since it happened.’ I said nothing; just pushed a piece of turkey around my plate, soaking it in thick, oily gravy. ‘Do you even know where she is this afternoon? What she’ll be doing?’

‘She’ll be sitting at home, I expect.’

‘By herself?’

‘Probably.’ I gave up and pushed the plate aside. ‘Look, there can’t be any going back. It was my father who held us together, anyway. Once he died, then … that was that.’

‘But you still saw each other after he died. That’s not why it happened.’

I did want to tell her, that’s the strange thing. I desperately wanted to tell her. But it was going to have to be torn out of me, one piece at a time, and the process was only just beginning. I didn’t mean to be unhelpful: I didn’t mean to sound wilfully enigmatic. That was just how it came out.

I said: ‘People can die more than once.’

Fiona stared at me. She said: ‘Why don’t we just skip the pudding and leave?’

∗

It was an argument, of sorts, even if neither of us could be quite sure how it had happened. We left the pub in silence and spoke only a few words on the way back to the car. Driving home, not wanting to waste the last half hour of daylight, I suggested a quick walk on the South Downs. We walked arm in arm, having silently buried our differences, whatever they were, through a landscape which might have been attractive on a sunny day but now, what with the cold and the encroaching dusk, felt bare and forbidding. Fiona seemed very tired.

I was amazed, in fact, that she’d managed to last this long, and it was no surprise to see her nodding off as we resumed our journey. I looked at her reposeful face and was reminded of the intimacy I’d felt, the sense of privilege, the night that I’d sneaked up to Joan’s room and watched her for a few minutes as she slept. But this was deceptive, because looking at Fiona was not like looking into the past: quite the opposite. For with every snatched glance (I was trying to keep my eyes on the road) I felt that I was being offered a glimpse of something new and unthinkable, something that I had been needlessly denying myself, now, for many years: a future.

We stopped off only once more, at a service station where I went to buy myself some Smarties and a Yorkie bar. By the time I got back to the car she was fast asleep.

∗

And yet, only six days later –

Can this be true?

And yet, only six days later

∗

I’m not sure I can go through with this.

4

The day after Boxing Day, my Christmas parcel of books arrived from the Peacock Press. There was a note from Mrs Tonks, apologizing for having sent them later than usual. I couldn’t motivate myself to look at them or even take the wrapping off. In the afternoon I went over to Findlay’s flat to see the papers he had stolen. They didn’t really tell me anything new. Instead of feeling intrigued, or baffled, or worried by Tabitha’s letter and the concrete evidence it provided that she had once written to the publishers and implored them to procure my services when I didn’t even know of her existence, I was able to register barely a flicker of interest. The Winshaws and their ruthless, fantastic, power-hungry lives had never seemed so distant. As for the envelope which presumably contained the incriminating photographs of Alice, I didn’t even open it.

Fiona was everything now.

The next day she had her rescheduled appointment at the clinic, and this time I was determined to accompany her. For some reason, she’d been feeling quite a lot worse since her day out by the seaside. I thought it would have done her some good. But her cough had returned, more insistent than before, and she complained of feeling short of breath: climbing the stairs to her flat the previous evening, she had had to rest on three of the four landings.

The appointment was at eleven-thirty. We waited ages for a bus and were a few minutes late arriving at the hospital, a black-bricked Victorian monstrosity more conducive, I would have thought, to the punishment of long-term offenders than the treatment of the sick. It didn’t matter, anyway: it was well past twelve when Fiona got called into the consulting room. I waited outside, struggling to sustain a vestige of optimism in the face of these relentlessly dispiriting surroundings: the queasy, pale yellow décor, the malfunctioning coffee machine, which had already robbed us of 6op, the erratic heating system (one enormous cast iron radiator was on full-blast, the other not at all; and every so often the pipes would gurgle and splutter and shake visibly against the walls, dislodging crumbs of plaster). I could only stand it for about five minutes, and was about to go out for a walk when Fiona returned, looking flushed and agitated.

‘Out already?’ I said. ‘That was quick.’

‘They can’t find my notes,’ she said, walking straight past me and heading for the exit.

I hurried after her.

‘What?’

We were outside again. It was bitterly cold.

‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘I mean that they can’t find the notes to my case. They looked for them this morning and they weren’t there. Some secretary’s probably got them. Lost in the system, basically. They blamed it on the holiday.’

‘So where does that leave you?’

‘I’ve got another appointment for next week.’

Tides of righteous frustration welled up inside me.

‘Fiona, they can’t keep doing this to you. You’re ill, for God’s sake. You can’t let your health be tampered with by a bunch of idiots. We’re not going to stand for it.’

This was just empty bravado, and we both knew it.

‘Shut up, Michael.’ She coughed furiously for about thirty seconds, doubled up against the hospital wall, and then straightened herself. ‘Come on. We’re going home.’

∗

It was New Year’s Eve.

The original plan had been to go back to the Mandarin. I’d phoned them at lunchtime and with a little persuasion had managed to secure a table for two; but by early in the evening it was obvious that Fiona wasn’t well enough to go out, so I promised to cook her dinner instead. There was a large continental grocer’s open on the King’s Road: I bought some fish and cheese and pasta and tinned prawns, in the hope of improvising a seafood lasagne. I got some wine and some candles. I was determined to make an occasion of it. I looked in on Fiona at about seven o’clock and she was sitting up in bed, a bit pale and breathless. Her temperature was high. She wasn’t very hungry, but she liked the sound of this meal. The idea seemed to amuse her.

‘Do you want me to get dressed up?’ she said.

‘Of course. I may even get out my old dinner suit, if I can find it.’

She smiled. ‘I can hardly wait.’

‘I’ll come and get you at nine. How does that sound?’

The dinner suit had a stale and musty smell, and the collar on my dress shirt was much too tight, but I put them on anyway. At nine o’clock the lasagne was bubbling away quite satisfactorily, the table was laid, the wine was nicely chilled. I let myself into Fiona’s flat. She wasn’t in the sitting room and there was no answer when I called out her name. A sudden premonition drew me into the bedroom.

Fiona was kneeling on the floor in front of the open wardrobe. She was wearing a long blue cotton dress which was not yet zipped up at the back. She was rocking slowly backwards and forwards and struggling for breath. I knelt down beside her and asked what was wrong. She said that she’d felt more and more exhausted as she was trying to get dressed, and then she’d been looking for a pair of tights in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe when she found that she couldn’t get her breath. I put my hand to her forehead, which was very hot, and beaded with sweat. Could she breathe now, I asked. She said yes, but she didn’t think she could get up just yet. I said that I was going to phone for the doctor. She nodded. I asked her where the number was. Between short, high breaths, she managed to say: ‘Phone.’

There was an address book by the telephone in the hallway. It took me a minute or two to remember the doctor’s name.

‘Dr Campion?’ I said, when the call was answered, and then realized that I was talking to a machine. There was a recorded message which told me to try another number. This time I got put through to an answering service. The man at the other end of the line asked me which doctor I was trying to contact, and whether it was an emergency. When I’d given him the details he told me that the deputizing doctor would call back as soon as possible.

The phone rang after about three or four minutes. I started to tell the doctor what was wrong. I wanted to be as quick and as clear as possible, so I could get back to Fiona, but it wasn’t that easy. Because he’d never heard of her before, never examined her, never seen any notes, never been told about the case, I had to explain everything from the beginning. Then he asked me if I thought it was serious. I told him I thought it was very serious, but I could tell that he didn’t really believe me. He thought I was talking about someone with a bad cold. I wasn’t going to be put off. I told him he had to come out and see her. He said that he had two other patients to see first – urgent cases, was how he described them – but that he’d come out as soon as he could.

I helped Fiona back into bed. Her breathing was marginally better by now. I went back to my flat and turned off the oven and blew out the candles. Then I changed out of my dinner suit and came back to sit with her.

She looked so beautiful, so

∗

The doctor arrived at about ten-fifteen. I tried to be angry with him for taking such a long time but he made this difficult by being so kind and efficient. He didn’t do much, just listened to her chest and took her pulse and asked me a few questions. He could see that she was ill.

He said: ‘I think she’d better go into casualty.’

This was the last thing I’d been expecting.

‘Casualty? But I thought that was for accidents.’

‘It’s for emergency cases,’ he said. He tore a page out of his notebook, scribbled four words on it, and then sealed it in an envelope from his briefcase. His own breathing while he did this seemed wheezy and over-emphatic. ‘Take this letter with you. It’s for the casualty doctor. Do you have a car?’

I shook my head.

‘You’d probably have a long wait for a taxi tonight. I’d better drive you both in. It’s on my way home.’

We prepared Fiona for the journey by helping her to put on two thick jumpers over her dress, and some thick woollen socks and a pair of boots. By the time we’d finished with her, she looked slightly ridiculous. I half-carried, half-walked her down the stairs and within a few minutes we were in the doctor’s shiny blue Renault. I was trying to stay calm but found that without realizing it I had screwed his envelope up into a tight ball in the palm of my hand. I did my best to smooth it out as we arrived.

∗

The casualty unit, while not quite as run-down as the outpatients’ clinic, none the less managed to feel both crowded and desolate. Business was brisk. There was frost on the pavements and several people had showed up with minor injuries from slips and falls; and because it was New Year’s Eve, there were already one or two victims of pub fights nursing swollen eyes and head wounds. They were expecting more of those later. At the same time there was an atmosphere of rather desperate levity and celebration in the air. Threadbare decorations adorned the walls and I got the impression that there was some sort of low-key staff party going on in a distant room. Some of the nurses running backwards and forwards were wearing silly brightly coloured hats, and the woman at reception had a radio on her desk, tuned to Radio 2 I gave her the doctor’s note and pointed to Fiona sitting over on a bench, but she didn’t seem to think it was any big deal. That was when I realized that the doctor hadn’t actually been as efficient as I’d thought, because he’d forgotten to phone up and let them know that we were coming in. She told us to wait and that a nurse would be along soon to take down all the details. We waited twenty minutes and there was no nurse. Fiona was shivering in my arms. Neither of us said anything. Then I went over to the desk again and asked what was going on. She apologized and told us we wouldn’t have to wait much longer.

Ten minutes later a nurse turned up and started asking questions. I answered most of them: Fiona wasn’t up to it. The nurse marked the answers off on a clipboard. Quite soon she seemed to reach a decision and said, ‘Follow me, please.’ As she led us off down a corridor I ventured a meek complaint: ‘There don’t seem to be many doctors about.’

It was already after eleven o’clock.

‘There’s only one casualty officer tonight. He’s seeing the majors and the minors, so he’s got a lot on his plate. There was one very sick patient in earlier. Rotten luck, isn’t it, on New Year’s Eve?’

I didn’t know whether she meant it was rotten luck for the patient or for the medical staff, so I didn’t answer.

She took us into a tiny windowless cubicle, equipped with a trolley and not much else, and fetched Fiona a gown.

‘There you are, dear. Can you put that on?’

‘Perhaps I’d better step outside,’ I said.

‘It’s all right, he can stay,’ said Fiona, to the nurse.

I turned to the wall and didn’t look while she took off her clothes and put the gown on. I’d never seen her naked.

The nurse took her temperature and her pulse and blood pressure. Then she disappeared. About a quarter of an hour later we were seen by the casualty officer, a harassed-looking man who went through only the most cursory introductions before putting his stethoscope to Fiona’s chest.

‘Nothing very startling there,’ he said. After that he took her pulse, and glanced at some figures from the chart which had been left by the bedside. ‘Hmm. Bit of a chest infection, by the looks of things. You may have to come in for a few days. I’ll get on to the admitting team, and in the meantime we’ll see if we can get you X-rayed tonight: assuming there isn’t too much of a queue.’

‘She’s been X-rayed already,’ I said. He looked at me questioningly. ‘I don’t mean today. I mean a few weeks ago. Her GP – Dr Campion – sent her up here and they took X-rays then.’

‘Who was the consultant?’

I couldn’t remember.

‘Dr Searle,’ said Fiona.

‘What did they show?’

‘We don’t know. The first time she came for the results he didn’t turn up, and the next time – a couple of days ago – they couldn’t find the notes. Said they were lost in the system.’

‘Well, they’re probably back in medical records by now. We can’t get at them tonight.’ He put the chart back on the bed. ‘I’ll bleep the registrar right away, and she can get hold of Dr Bishop for you. Our houseman,’ he explained to Fiona. ‘He’ll be down to see you in a few minutes.’

With that he left, pulling the curtain behind him. Fiona and I exchanged glances. She smiled bravely.

‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘At least he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with my chest.’

‘I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with your chest,’ I said. Don’t ask me why: I know people are supposed to make stupid jokes at moments of crisis, but surely not that stupid. But she did her best to laugh, and perhaps it was, in a way, a kind of turning point: a final acknowledgement of the physical attraction I’d been running away from these last few weeks.

The moment soon passed.

Dr Bishop wasn’t long coming. He was young and gangly, with heavy bags under his eyes and an alarming shell-shocked, punch-drunk expression. It looked to me as if he’d had no sleep for thirty hours or more.

‘OK, I’ve been talking things over with the sister,’ he said, ‘and we’ve decided the best thing would be to find you a bed as soon as we can. It’s a busy night tonight and we need all the casualty bays we can get, so it’ll be better for us and better for you. They’re snowed under in radiology at the moment so we’ll have to get the X-rays done in the morning. We’ll get them done first thing. Anyway, as soon as you’re on the ward, you can have your first lot of antibiotics.’

‘The thing is, though,’ I said, ‘she’s got this lump on her neck. We wondered if that might have anything –’

‘The important thing is to find a bed,’ said Dr Bishop. ‘That’s the difficult part. If we can find you a bed, then we’re laughing.’

‘Well will that take long? We’ve been waiting –’

‘It’s pot luck in this place at the moment.’

And with that unsettling remark, he disappeared. A couple of minutes later the nurse popped her head around the curtain.

‘Everything all right in here?’

Fiona nodded.

‘Some of the staff are having a few drinks upstairs. Soft drinks, that is. Just to see in the New Year. I wondered if you might like anything.’

She considered. ‘Some fruit juice would be lovely. Orange juice, or something.’

‘They were looking a bit low on orange juice,’ the nurse said doubtfully. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Would Fanta be all right?’

We gave her to understand that Fanta would be fine, and then we were left alone again, for what seemed like a very long time. I could think of nothing to say except to keep asking Fiona how she was feeling. She said she was tired. That was all she ever complained about, feeling tired. She didn’t want to move, or sit up: she just lay on the trolley, holding my hand. She clutched it tightly. She looked terrified.

‘What’s taking them so long?’ That was my other heavily overworked piece of small talk. Just before midnight I went out into the corridor to see if anything was happening. Looking around for a familiar figure, I caught a glimpse of the casualty officer. He was rushing towards reception. I chased after him, shouting out, ‘Excuse me,’ but then he was met by a team of nurses pushing an unconscious patient along on a trolley. I stood at a short distance while he started asking questions. The patient had only just been brought in, apparently, after being found almost dead in a car. There was talk of carbon monoxide poisoning, and some earnest, low-voiced remarks were exchanged about his chances of survival. I wouldn’t have taken much notice of this, but as the trolley passed by I caught a glimpse of the patient’s face and for some reason it seemed distantly familiar. For a moment I was almost certain that I had seen this man somewhere before. But the feeling could have come from anywhere – it might just have been someone I’d passed in the street a few times – and I soon forgot about it when I felt a tap on my shoulder and found myself looking into the nurse’s beaming face as she said: ‘Mr Owen? I’ve some good news for you.’

I didn’t understand at first, but as my mind came gradually into focus, thinking only of Fiona and the urgent search to find her a bed, I too broke into a relieved, helpless smile. It froze when I realized that the nurse was trying to place two plastic beakers into my outstretched hands.

‘There was some orange juice left after all,’ she said. ‘And listen.’ From the radio on the receptionist’s desk, we could hear the chimes of Big Ben as it sounded the hour. ‘It’s twelve o’clock. A very happy New Year to you, Mr Owen. Ring out the old, ring in the new.’

Mark

December 31st 1990

When it became clear that a war against Saddam Hussein was inevitable, Mark Winshaw decided to celebrate by throwing an especially elaborate party on New Year’s Eve. He had no friends as such, but still managed to attract more than a hundred and fifty guests, drawn partly by the promise of each other’s glittering company and partly by stories of the extravagant hospitality for which Mark’s house in Mayfair was famous. There was a smattering of politicians and media people (including his cousins Henry and Hilary), and a few celebrities, but the bulk of the guest list was made up of middle-aged men whose dull grey paunchiness gave little indication that they were among the richest and most powerful captains of commerce and industry. Mark wandered between the groups of people, occasionally stopping to say hello, even more occasionally stopping to say a few words, but otherwise as aloof and inscrutable as ever. Meanwhile his young and beautiful German wife (he had remarried quite recently) seemed to be so busy attending to the guests that nobody saw her speak to her husband once all evening. The atmosphere was high-spirited, but Mark did not join in the hilarity. He drank hardly anything; he danced only once; even when he came upon a group of models taking turns to throw each other into the basement swimming-pool, he watched from a distance, without a tremor of feeling.