Cat was leaning back, eyes closed, her face drained of everything but exhaustion.

"A patient who was nursing her mother at home said to me, "I'm way beyond tired." And this will get worse. It's like lying down while someone rains blows on you but somehow each blow hurts in a different way."

"How are the children?"

Cat shook her head. "The saving grace there is Judith Connolly. My father has been seeing her and she is amazing-calm, strong, easy-going, got the measure of him perfectly and fantastic with all three of the children. She's fast becoming my rock, in the absence of Simon."

Jane took a swig of her whisky. "Absence? But I saw him on the television news."

"Yes, you did. That's one reason for his absence and obviously the chief one-it's tough for him. But what makes me mad is his stupid attitude to Judith. Si was always Mum's blue-eyed boy but Mum is dead and he can't take someone else being at Hallam House."

"Doesn't he see that it's helping your father?"

Cat snorted. "He doesn't choose to see. It's a good job he's so tied up with work and I've got Chris to worry about or I'd really lay into him."

Jane said nothing. She had not been sure what she would feel, coming back here, hearing about him. Everything ought to be overshadowed by Karin's death and Chris's illness. She was acutely aware of Simon, nevertheless. He was associated so closely for her with this house and with his sister. Jane's memories were more vivid than she ever expected.

"I never knew what happened exactly with you two," Cat said now. "And feel free not to tell me."

Jane set down her whisky glass. "I ran away," she said. "That's what happened."

"You sure? Only it's usually the other way round. Simon is the one who runs."

Jane shook her head. "I ran. I didn't know what I felt. I was in a very confused and fragile emotional state and I couldn't cope with another factor being added to the mix. It ought to have helped but it made things worse."

"A lot had happened to you. Awful things."

"I needed to sort myself out."

"And have you?"

"Not altogether. But I think I am slowly working my way towards it-whatever it may be. I thought it was going to be the abbey. I really did want to make that work, but I knew straight away that it wouldn't. I knew when I lay in bed in my room there on the first night. I struggled on for six months and I'm glad I did."

"One down, so to speak."

"Yes. I feel much more confident about the next move. I want to do more academic work."

"You mustn't bury yourself in a library, Jane, you're too good with people. A library is as bad as a convent."

"But a library combined with students and a hospital is about right, don't you think? I don't deserve my luck."

"As to that, which of us deserves what we get?" Cat shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. She got up and pushed the last of the logs together so that they burned up bright again. "Australia is as far away as a sunlit daydream."

"Did you like it?"

"Not really. But we were happy together, and it was different, which always shakes you up. Looking back, it seems idyllic, frankly."

"How is Chris coping? I don't mean physically."

"I don't know. How strange that sounds. But I really don't. At the moment, he's just pretty doped and getting through the days, sleeping a lot, waiting for the radiotherapy to start. Everything else is just beyond him. And you know Chris ... he doesn't philosophise, he just gets on with it. The worst thing is, I can talk to patients about dying. I do talk to them. I think it's important. I get them to tell me what they feel, I get their relatives to do the same. But I can't do it with Chris. We talk about what's going to happen medically, but otherwise ... I can't and he doesn't. We have never ever had anything we couldn't talk about, even if we argued. We often argued. But now there is this. It's frozen us, somehow. I feel as if I'm acting a part. This isn't me, this isn't Chris, this isn't us."

"It's strange. Karin believed so passionately in alternative medicine that she rejected everything you and I would accept-and probably Chris too."

"Definitely Chris. He's an evidence-based man. He won't consider anything else. When it comes down to it, you know, not many doctors do."

"What would you blame for Karin's death? That she refused orthodox treatment?"

"Cancer is what I blame for her death, Jane. It's what I will blame for Chris's. But the longer I'm in medicine, the more I see of it, it becomes clear that what we know about cancer goes on one line that reads as follows: "You get it, or you don't. You get better, or you don't." There's another thing ... I feel it ought to be me, I feel guilty. But inside, I'm just relieved that it isn't me. That it's someone else again, even if the someone is my husband. I've escaped. There now, I've said it."

"But that's what we all feel, isn't it? The bullet missed me. Phew. No, that's not the best analogy just now."

"Are you going to see Simon, now you're here?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I have to go tomorrow, and you say he's tied up with this investigation."

"Stay with us for a few days. The children would love it and I won't have much time for friends once Chris comes out of hospital."

Jane was silent for a moment. She wanted to stay and she had no reason to be back in Cambridge yet. She might also see Simon. Did she want that? Yes. Should she?

"I'd like to very much. But I don't think it would be a very good idea."

It was Cat's turn to say nothing.

Forty-two.

It was chance. A beautiful chance. Roadworks had held him up for so long he'd tried a side route, taken a wrong turn off the bypass and found himself in Dedmeads Road.

One end led into the new Ashdown estate, a large and still growing area of private housing, interlacing cul-de-sacs off a main avenue. The completed houses were furthest away. From Dedmeads Road it was still a building site, half-finished houses and garage blocks, unmade roads, scaffolding, pieces of scrub which would be turfed as the final job. Of the completed houses, many were still unsold. Developers' flags flew outside a couple of show houses.

At the north end, down which he had just come, one road of identical 1960s houses led to the bypass and away.

He stopped. Got out and looked around. He had the very dirty silver Focus. You saw a dozen of them every half-hour.

It was nine ten. School was in. Workers in. Dedmeads Road was empty apart from a few mothers with toddlers and push chairs gossiping in a cluster outside the row of shops.

He got back into the car and drove on down. Parked near the shopping block but not near enough to have anyone pay attention to the car or the number plate.

The mothers huddled closer as he walked past and into the post office-cum-newsagent's, and bought a paper and a packet of chewing gum.

"Morning. Thanks."

"Going to rain for the weekend again."

"Right bugger then."

"Eighty pence. Cheers."

"See you later."

He walked out, reading the front page of the redtop. The shopkeeper had forgotten him before he reached the door.

Newsagent's. Chinese fish and chip shop, closed. Launderette, two people inside, busy at the machines, not noticing him as he glanced through the windows. Late night grocer. Louise, Ladies' Hairdresser. He walked straight by, looking at the paper; the place had a venetian blind down, slats open. No one saw him. Empty shop. Empty card-display stands pulled into the middle. Dirty windows. Piles of junk mail on the floor below the letter box.

That was it. He walked on, past a block of semis. Then the low brick wall. A gravel car park. Bit of grass. Three or four trees. Blue sign. Gold lettering.

Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church Times of Mass: daily at 8 a.m.; Sundays and Holy Days.

8 a.m., 9 a.m., 10.30 a.m., 4 p.m.

Confessions: Saturdays and Thursdays, 67.30 p.m.

Priest: Father G. Nolan, The Presbytery,

40 Dedmeads Road.

Bare-looking 1960s brick. Bright blue, yellow and green stained glass on either side of the light oak doors. Three shallow steps up. Wide gateway. Low iron gates, open and hooked back against the wall.

On the other side of the road, semis and a single detached house quite low down at the bottom of steep drives. Outside the detached, a sign. Dedmeads Veterinary Surgery. Three or four cars.

Hours: Monday to Friday 911 a.m. and 35 p.m.; Saturday 911 a.m.

Perfect.

Everything was perfect. Chance. A beautiful chance. He had to take it. Things fell out the way they did for a reason, he knew that.

He got back into the dirty silver Ford Focus and drove unobtrusively away.

At six that evening the Focus was stowed away in the lock-up he rented in Canal Street and he was in the van on his way to the airfield. It was raining heavily. Traffic was light and he knew he wasn't being followed because no one had any reason whatsoever to follow him. No one. He turned on the car radio to a local newsflash about the body of a teenage girl found in a ditch. She'd been missing for over a week. So why had it taken so long to find her? What had the police been farting about at? She'd been assaulted and strangled. Who did that sort of thing? Some animal. He shuddered, thinking of her, daft as teenage girls were, full of herself, cocky. Or some sad, lost kid, broken home, abused already and now again. Gone off with a stranger for a bit of fun and attention. Affection.

How did parents get through all that, girl not arriving home, mobile not answering, friends saying she'd left them hours before. Waiting. Dreading. Hoping. Desperate.

What kind of animal did that?

He knew nothing about that sort of behaviour.

His were completely different.

A clean kill.

The airfield was full of potholes and the potholes were full of water. Rain streamed across the headlights. He doused them as he drove up to the hangar and used the torch when he opened the doors. He drove the van inside and closed the doors again, took out the mechanic's lamp from the boot and plugged it into the battery.

Which was when he heard the sound. He froze. Outside the hangar? Or inside? He waited. Nothing. He waited again, counting. Two minutes. Three minutes. Nothing.

He relaxed, picked up the torch again and trained it on the place where the rolled-up plastic was hidden. Waited again. Nothing.

He stepped on the cement blocks he had manoeuvred there weeks ago and reached for the space behind the strut. As he did so, there was a noise again, far back inside the dark recesses of the hangar.

He jumped quickly down and walked towards it, holding the torch out. His trainers made no sound.

The noise was odd. It might have been a human groan, or an animal snuffling. There were foxes out here, his headlights had picked them up.

He moved slowly forward, though now the noise had stopped he was unsure if he was heading towards it. The torchlight picked up scuffed papers and broken concrete rubble on the ground, and the sides of the hangar when he moved it higher. Nothing else.

It came again. Animal. Had to be.

The next minute, something moved, his torch picked up a series of shapes and shadows, and then a man was lurching blindly towards him, hand up to his face against the powerful beam.

"Whatsitwhositwhatthefucksgoingon?"

He stopped. The man was a few yards away, still dazed by the light.

He trained it straight into his face.

"Bloodygerritoffwhatthehellyoufuckingplayingat?"

"Turn round."

But the bundle of old clothes and filth that was the man who had been disturbed from his drunken snoring in the corner of the hangar took another lurching step forward.

"Turn round."

The man did so, swaying a bit. "Allrightallrightwhatyoudoingsfuckinnightnothurtinganyone