'I can stay as long as I'm needed, you just decide as you think best.'

'What about Dad?'

There was a very slight pause before Judith said, 'I'll let him know.'

Cat was not too preoccupied to notice the pause, and the edge to her stepmother's voice.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I said my old name. Not by accident. Said it, told someone. I had enough warnings about how you slip up, get caught off guard. Man comes to the door with a parcel. 'Name?' and before you know it, you've told him.

Eleven.

THERE WAS STILL work to be done on the sheltered bungalows in d.u.c.h.ess of Cornwall Close and the maisonettes were nowhere near ready. The snow had delayed them for another three days and if it had been up to Nick and Piotr there would have been no turning up on day four either. Just after nine, the building manager had been on the phone to them both. Just before ten, they were on site, by which time Matt Williams was sitting on a window ledge drinking tea, having been at work since eight and well ahead with the wiring.

'I hate the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I f.u.c.kin' hate him. What'd he have to come in for?'

Piotr shrugged. 'I guess the snow is going pretty quick.'

'Wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't f.u.c.kin' slept here, make sure he was on time. I f.u.c.kin' hate him.'

'So shut up with your f.u.c.kin' everything.'

Matt did not look up from his Daily Mirror.

The three of them had worked together for several weeks without exchanging more than a dozen words a day, mainly because of Nick.

'I just don't like him. Work with him if I have to but I don't have to like the b.u.g.g.e.r as well.'

'He's OK, this Matt, what's your trouble with him?'

To Piotr, dislike of a fellow human being who had done you no harm, without any reason forthcoming, was wrong. Matt said little, but worked hard.

The previous week, Nick had asked Piotr to have a pint at the end of the day and pointedly not invited Matt.

'Rude, I think, Nicko, you maybe ask him another day.'

'I f.u.c.kin' won't, I don't like him.'

'Wish you give me good reason.'

'He's shifty.'

'What is shifty?'

'Don't trust him.'

'How you don't?'

'Take it from me.'

'He maybe likes only to be with himself.'

'Maybe.'

Matt was on his hands and knees working on the wiring for a double power point. The room was full of light from the sun reflected off the snow but it was very cold.

Nick made a gesture with his foot towards Matt's backside. If he hadn't been so b.l.o.o.d.y keen to get back to work they could have had another day off. At least.

'There's a minimum temperature you're allowed to work.'

'For offices,' Matt said, not looking up.

'Course it's not only for offices. Why would it be only for offices?'

'Otherwise it would be for farmers ploughing fields and men on trawlers and roofers and scaffolders and gardeners and '

'All right, all right. It's still f.u.c.kin' freezing.'

'Work harder then.'

Piotr was a tall, broad-shouldered man but it took all his strength to separate them. By the time he had, Nick had a b.l.o.o.d.y nose and a cut above his eye. Matt had tripped and fallen, got up again and charged back into the fight like a bull.

'You stop this, stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, quit. You quit, OK?'

Piotr looked Matt full in the face. Matt stared him out, angry, dangerous, fists still clenched.

Nick was trying to stop his nose bleeding by pressing it on his overall sleeve. Piotr handed him a paint rag but the blood went on dripping.

'Go get snow and push it onto your nose, it will work, like an ice pack. Maybe you also, Matt.'

Matt's cheekbone was flaring dark red. He shook his head and turned away, went back to the power point. He said nothing. He didn't need to the set of his back was enough. Piotr got Nick to the door, and rolled some snow into a small heap in his palm. Splashes of blood stained the snow on the ground but the cold pack worked after a moment.

'He's f.u.c.kin' dangerous, he'd have b.l.o.o.d.y killed me, half a chance.'

'No. But maybe you better not kick him again in the a.r.s.e, OK?'

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'OK, now, back in, back to work. Better we all just work.'

They were meant to go on until four when the light began to fade but it was so cold that they left just after three. Matt walked out by himself. Nick and Piotr went in Nick's van. It was below freezing again but with the snow thawing all day, the roads were easier.

'Pint?'

'Cup of tea. Too soon for drink.'

'Get on.'

But Nick parked on a patch of waste ground near the Cypriot cafe.

'Face OK?'

'I could have him for this,' Nick said, feeling his nose.

'Stupid, you started it, you kicked him in the a.r.s.e.'

'I hate him.'

'Yes, you say so over and over again. OK, you hate him. Still stupid to kick him in the a.r.s.e.'

'He got a wife?'

'How do I know that? He never talks.'

'Won't have. He'd never get it together.'

'He looks OK, he's big strong man. Has to have.'

'Says his dad might have one of the bungalows.'

'Well, OK.' Piotr's mouth was stuffed full of doughnut. He washed it down with the last of his tea and went to get two more mugs.

Nick fingered his face, knowing he'd been stupid, knowing he'd have a great bruise the next morning, knowing what she'd say, knowing his own temper. Stupid. There were men to walk away from and Matt was one of them. He hadn't been able to stop himself.

'Cheer up.' Piotr banged down his mug of tea. 'Maybe he finish the electrics tomorrow so we won't work with him any more days. Nice though.'

'What?'

'Those places. If his dad get one, good luck. Nice places if you're old.'

Some days, I wake up laughing. I even wake in the middle of the night laughing, but then I always did.

I wake up laughing because I think where I am and then I think where I might have been. And I was there for seven months, so I know what it's like, and I fully expected to be back there for a whole lot longer.

So I wake up where I am and I start laughing. Just laughing. With my life. How it is now. How it's turned out.

Twelve.

SHE WAS COMING up from very deep down, where it had been lightless and sunless and soundless. She had been there for a long time. Years? Yes, it must have been years. Then strange sounds began, faint pulsing, watery and regular, like the sound of a baby's heartbeat in the womb heard through the fetal monitor. There was still no light but the intense blackness had begun to shrivel to grey at the edges, curling inwards and sucking in the dark. She had been lying heavy and inert at the bottom of the black soundlessness for those years. Now, she was being pulled slowly up and her body felt lighter. The greyness was solid, then opaque, then misty.

Someone pulled the plugs out of her ears, abruptly releasing her, and she surfaced.

'Molly.' The back of her left hand felt something warm covering it and the warmth moved.

She had opened her eyes, but when she did so, what she saw was so terrifying she tried to will herself back down into the blackness and soundlessness again. She saw a white sheet on a bed, the end of a bed rail, a white wall, and a figure out of focus, standing at the bottom of the bed. Something at the top of the figure was shining and she knew that it was a bald head, the bald head of a man, the man who had tried to kill her in the room with the white-covered bed. She had no recollection of him, his name or why he wanted her to die, but she knew that if she opened her eyes again he would be there but that she would see him more clearly and when she saw him he would look at her directly and she would know his name.

'Molly . . .'

The warmth moved slightly against her hand and there was a little pressure. She liked the voice. The voice made her feel safe.

'Molly, can you hear me? I thought I saw you open your eyes. Can you do that again?'

The hand smoothed the back of her own hand. She knew the voice and that it was not a man's voice, and a name belonging to the voice was floating about just ahead of her, bobbing like a balloon on a string, but just too far away for her to touch it and pull it in so that she would know the name.

'I'll keep talking to you. I can stay a bit longer. I came to see you this morning and I told you this so perhaps you did hear. If you can't open your eyes, just squeeze my hand. If you can remember what happened to you, squeeze my hand. Can you squeeze my hand now? You needn't try and squeeze hard. Just hold mine a bit more tightly.'

She knew that she could, but the trouble was if she squeezed this person's hand to show that she had heard her and understood her, what might happen then? Who else might touch her? The man with the shining head might press his hand on hers, might . . .

Molly heard her own voice, crying out but not saying words. Just crying out.

'It's all right. You're in hospital and I'm here with you, Molly. You're fine.'

Without knowing that she was going to do it, Molly opened her eyes and at once they focused not on the man with the shining head, not on her own hand, not on the white covers, but on a face she knew.

'Cat . . .' she said.

'She's going to be all right. No brain damage, her lungs are clear. Once they come round and there's no organ failure, then it's very fast forward.'

Cat knew the tone of voice and every nuance of expression because she used them herself. Confidence, an almost casual a.s.sumption that there would be full recovery, not even the caveat that 'providing this or that does not occur'. Molly was still young enough to go from death's door to fit and well within a short s.p.a.ce of time.

'Physically, anyway.' The registrar waved his hand as he turned away and went off down the corridor.

Molly's father, mother and brother had arrived. For the first time in many hours, Cat was free.

In the League of Friends cafe she bought a cheese and tomato baguette, crisps, a bar of chocolate, tea, suddenly ravenous with the hunger that accompanies relief.

Physically, he had said. That was his area. He left the rest to other medics. Molly was seeing a counsellor but Cat was doubtful if it was helping her enough or why would she have overdosed to the extent she nearly died? She was almost a qualified doctor. She knew what she was doing. Clearly she needed more intensive psychiatric help and Cat would try and make sure she got it. Molly was not merely a lodger, she had become part of the Deerbon family. They loved her. Cat owed it to her to do more than get her good professional care. The trauma she had suffered at the hands of Leo Fison would live in her head forever and certainly she would not be able to return and take her medical finals until she had her reactions more under control. But even if she pa.s.sed her exams, would she ever be able to cope as a doctor? Cat finished her tea. She was angry at a man who could so disregard his fellow human beings and their feelings. He would have killed Molly, she had no doubt, but he had vanished. No one had seen him, he had left no tracks.

'You'll get him,' Cat had said confidently to her brother.

'Maybe.'

'But he's a dangerous man.'