'Not long now, though, is it? I'll be home before you know it. Can't wait. D'you know what I want? A long soak in a hot tub, a Chinese, and a day in bed. Not just sleeping, if you know what I mean ...'

After Rob put the phone down, he sat on the edge of the bed with his towel still wrapped around him, until he was so cold he had goosebumps.

The phone rang again. This time, he thought it would be Susannah. Helena wouldn't ring back. He couldn't talk to Susannah right now. He let the phone ring out, relieved when it stopped. He was lost in his thoughts when the phone beside him started ringing again. He answered reluctantly.

It was his mum, and she was crying. 'Thank God. Rob. I thought you were never going to answer.'

Rob thought he knew and understood exactly the pattern of his father's deterioration. Thought he was dealing with the shock and horror of his dad's shrinking away from him. Until he saw him in a hospital bed. He might not even have recognized him, if his mother hadn't been sitting beside him. And the shock almost made him stagger backwards.

He hadn't seen the flashing light on his telephone answering machine. He'd been exhausted and preoccupied when he got to the end of his long drive home from France, and he hadn't looked. And then Susannah had turned up ... and he couldn't think about that any more. Lois hadn't called his mobile phone. She'd never mastered that number, and he knew the technology frightened her. She wouldn't have had the capacity to email or text him she didn't have a mobile phone of her own, and his parents had always resisted buying a home computer, saying they could never use it enough to justify the cost. So she'd had to rely on the landline. And he hadn't looked at the damn machine. After he hung up, he'd played the messages while he ran around the flat throwing clothes on. She'd left five. Each one more desperate and heartbreaking. The messages told the story of his father's deterioration. In the first, she was worried about his breathing, which sounded different in his sleep, and she was calling the GP to make a home visit and would Rob call her, please? The fourth message was panic-stricken. She was almost shouting. Where was he? Why wasn't he answering? She needed him. She couldn't decide things without him. Where was he? Please? Her voice was full of sobs. It almost killed him to hear it. By the fifth, it was done. He was intubated in the hospital. A machine was breathing for him, and would be until the moment he died. He'd never speak to either of them again.

Rob got to the hospital as fast as he could, loathing himself with a ferocity that scared him, and more frightened than he'd ever been in his life. He'd failed both of them. He'd failed completely and utterly.

How could this have happened so fast? He'd asked his mother, he'd asked the doctor the young, slick doctor who'd come to the bedside and told him what had happened, as if he was talking to a child. It was the nature of the disease, the doctor said, not quite meeting his eye. Unpredictable. No prognosis was the same, and no pattern, time-wise, consistently emerged. This had been fast, yes, but he'd seen faster. No, there was nothing he could do no reversal. Rob knew that, really. He knew enough about the disease to understand that much, at least.

Sobs racked his body and he hated himself for crying in front of his mother. But she'd already forgiven him. She'd deflated like a week old party balloon the moment he'd walked on to the ward. She'd so obviously been staying strong with every ounce of willpower she possessed, and it had deserted her when she saw him. For now, she had no comfort to offer him, and so they sat, on either side of Frank's bed, and Rob cried until his ribs hurt for his father, whose voice he would never hear again, and for his mother, who had just, effectively, lost the man she had loved for more than forty years.

Susannah knocked on the front door for the first time in years. She'd promised Libby she'd make amends with her best friend, and she realized she needed to put things right with Amelia before she could move on. She usually just went straight in, and almost always remonstrated with Amelia straight afterwards for not having a chain on the door. It was the middle of the afternoon, and she knew the kids and Jonathan were likely to be on a Saturday outing somewhere. She was banking on Amelia's mum not being there either.

Amelia came to the door. She'd lost more weight since Susannah had seen her, and it wasn't that long. She looked utterly vulnerable. She was wearing a fleece Susannah presumed belonged to Jonathan, and it swamped her. She had nothing on her head today, and the baldness seemed stark and ugly.

The door had clear glass panels, and Susannah watched her friend walk towards her, remorse and sorrow welling up in her. Amelia didn't open it straight away she stared at Susannah through the glass. Susannah couldn't decide whether she was still angry. For a moment she wondered whether Amelia was actually going to let her in.

But then she turned the handle and opened the door, stepping aside to let Susannah in.

'No chain?'

The two women stood in the hall.

'I'm sorry, Meels. I should never have left.'

'I sent you away.'

'I shouldn't have listened to you.'

Amelia snorted.

'And I'm sorry because a lot of what you said ... you were right ... I didn't want to listen.'

Amelia stepped nearer, and opened her arms, and the two of them held each other for a short while. Susannah could feel all of Amelia's ribs, even under the voluminous fleece.

'I was right. But I'm sorry, too. You didn't need tough love that day. I know that. I was itching for a fight. Took it out on you. Can't help myself, sometimes. I'm so fucking angry some days I could rip someone's head off.'

'So, I actually got lucky?'

'Pretty much.' She sniffed and pulled back. 'Tea? About all I'm keeping down this week, and I'm not making any promises about that.'

'Tea. I'll make it.'

'Oh yes, you will.'

The two of them walked down the corridor towards the kitchen.

'So, what's with the Sinead O'Connor impression?'

'Do fuck off.'

Amelia sat curled up on the deep sofa to direct proceedings, while Susannah filled the kettle and plugged it in to boil, and described how she had walked out on the life she'd built with Douglas a life she'd outgrown but hadn't had the courage to discard.

Until Rob. But she sensed now wasn't the time to mention his new role in her life. There'd be time for that.

'This is so weird,' Amelia offered, watching Susannah opening cupboards.

'Me waiting on you, or this motley collection of tea bags you've got on offer?' Susannah read off the labels from the boxes in the cupboard. 'Nettle. Fennel. Chamomile. Yuck. What, no PG tips?'

'It's the holistic approach.' Amelia laughed.

'You're off your rocker. All British people know that good old builder's tea is the great cure-all. Weird is right.'

'I didn't mean that ... I meant all this.' She flung her arms out in an all-embracing gesture.

Susannah looked at her quizzically.

'You're going to be living on your own. Jonathan's moved back in. Total reversal. You're going after what you want. I'm compromising ...'

'Is that how you see it, you and Jonathan?'

'Oh, I don't know. It all seemed cut and dried, before this wretched illness.'

'Were you ever completely out of love with him? I mean, I know you had your reasons. What was it something about him not liking how you sang in the car ... ?'

Amelia threw a cushion in Susannah's direction.

'I'm kidding ... I know why you did it. But ... were you?'

'Out of love?' She paused. 'I suppose not ... not completely. I don't know if you ever can be. We were together for so many years. We had three kids, for God's sake.'

'So, did you somewhere in the deepest recesses of your mind did you think there was a chance you'd get back together?'

'I don't know. Would I have gone through with the divorce if I had? Did I see us as some kind of Burton and Taylor? I don't know.'

'How did you feel about Jess?'

Amelia laughed. 'Well, if we continue with the Hollywood comparison ... I saw her as ... nothing more than the Sally ... I was the one with the Krupp diamond, dahling ...'

Letting herself into Douglas's house felt so strange. This house had been Susannah's home for years it was full of her things but it felt alien to her now, so quickly. She walked slowly from room to room, remembering. In the doorway of the bedroom she and Douglas had shared, she stood for a while, staring at the bed, thinking of the two of them in it, sleeping, making love, reading. The decorative pillows were gone, and she smiled at the messy way the duvet had been pulled up, the pillows left askew. There was a bed making a statement if ever there was one Tracey Emin would be proud.

It hadn't been all bad. They'd been happy, and they'd loved each other. And if, now, drunk on her feelings for Rob, she couldn't claim it was as strong a love, as lasting a love, as good a love, she could at least admit it had been love. If it had a memory-foam mattress and how well she remembered the argument they'd had over one in the bed shop the bed would remember well the years when the two of them slept entwined in the middle, and then the long time, towards the end, where they crept inexorably towards the edges.

There wasn't all that much really. Clothes, and shoes stuff like that. She packed the contents of the two wardrobes into the plastic boxes she'd carried in from the car, filling a black bin liner with things to give away, and another with things for the cleaner, smiling at her own burst of efficiency. In the bathroom, he'd already herded all her lotions and potions into one corner of the vanity unit she swept them with her arm into another plastic container.

From the rest of the house, she took very little. It didn't feel right taking things from the kitchen and the living room felt petty and vindictive. She didn't want to divide up the books or the DVDs or the good glasses. It felt unutterably sad. She took one photograph a picture of the two of them with the three children in wetsuits peeled to the waist that had been taken with the tripod a few years ago on the beach at Salcombe. She didn't know what she'd do with it, but she laid it on top of a box of coats, remembering the hot sunny day, and the happy feeling.

When she'd finished, and had carried all the boxes out to her car under the steady gaze of the old woman who lived in the house across the road, she made herself a cup of tea and sat for the last time at the kitchen table, spinning the house key between her fingers, and wondering whether or not to write a note.

She heard a key in the lock. Looking up at the kitchen clock, she saw that it was 6 p.m. She hoped Douglas hadn't changed his mind. She'd been more upset by the process than she'd expected, and she wasn't ready for a scene.

But it was Daisy. 'Hiya.' She pulled off her backpack, and sat down in the opposite chair.

'What are you doing here?'

'Dad said you were coming to clear out your stuff today. I wanted to see you.'

'Oh.' Susannah stood up. 'Do you want some tea?'

Daisy shook her head, then sat forward in her chair, resting her face on her elbows.

'How's Seth?'

'Fine. Good.'

'Rosie?'

She shrugged. 'Okay, I suppose.'

'Have you come to see me, Daisy?'

She nodded, twisting her earring in her earlobe, and pulling her sleeves down over her hands. 'I want to ask you not to leave.'

'Daisy ...'

'Don't leave Dad. Don't leave us.'

'Daisy, please.'

'I mean it, Susannah. Dad loves you. I think he knows he's been crap. He can change, I know he can. If he wants to. And if changing meant he could keep you, I think he'd want to.'

'Did your dad ask you to come and talk to me?'

Daisy snorted. 'No. God. He's got no idea I'm here. All my own idea. Not just for Dad, either. I love you, Susannah. Rosie and Fin do, too. We don't want you to go. And you're choosing to leave us, too.'

Now Susannah's eyes filled with instant tears. Daisy had never said anything remotely like this to her not even last year, after all that business with Seth.

'I know it sounds weird, but you've been more of a parent to us, sometimes, than our real mum and dad have been. That stuff with Seth I couldn't have gone to either of them about that. You helped me, Susannah. You. Same with Rosie. What are we supposed to do if you go?'

She had started to cry herself now.

'And I know we haven't been all that great to you. I feel so stupid now. I took it for granted, you know, even though you and Dad weren't married I just assumed you'd always be here. I feel like I was just, you know, really getting to know you. I like coming here. I like having you to talk to.'

'We can still be friends, Daisy.' It sounded feeble, and even as Susannah said it, she knew it.

'That's not the same. Besides, you'll move on. You're already moving out. You'll find someone else. You'll have your own kids, maybe. We're nothing to you.' Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks now.

Susannah went round the table to kneel by Daisy's chair, and wiped away a tear with her hand. She was shaken by the vehemence of what Daisy was saying. 'Don't you ever say that. You're not nothing to me.'

'I wish Dad had married you. Then you'd be our stepmother.'

Maybe if he had, things would be different.

'But we might still be splitting up, Daisy. You can see that, can't you?'

'You don't really think that, do you?'

Susannah didn't know. If. If. If. 'It doesn't matter, Daisy. Not really.' She struggled to explain it. 'It's complicated.'

'Adults always say that. It isn't. Not at all. You love someone, or you don't.'

Susannah smiled. In a way, Daisy was absolutely right. Just like her dad had been. Young people understood, it seemed, what old people knew. It was just the ones in the middle who didn't get it. She nodded. 'I don't. Not any more. I don't love your dad any more the way you need to love someone if you're planning to stay with them, spend the rest of your life with them. I don't. I'm sorry, Daisy.'

Daisy stared at her with wide eyes.

'And it doesn't matter why not. You're right. Adults do complicate things. It's irrelevant whose fault it is, or what made it this way. It just is.'

Daisy shrugged. 'So, that's it, just like that.'

'There isn't really any other way for it to be. I can't stay for him, and I can't stay for you guys.'

'I know.' Her voice was very small now.

'It wouldn't be right, and it wouldn't work.'

Daisy nodded and sniffed. Her sweater was pulled down over her hands, like it always was, but Susannah could see that she was wringing them, twisting the fingers around each other, trying to stop the emotion that was pouring out.

She held the girl in her arms for a moment, taking in the smell of her hair, and the slightness of her narrow shoulders. She felt close to tears herself. She hadn't been prepared for this.

Daisy pulled away first, embarrassed. 'So. That's it. I'm sorry I came, I suppose. I didn't want to make it worse.'

'You didn't, Daisy. If it doesn't sound too crap, I'm really glad you came. I didn't know, I honestly didn't, how you felt about me. I'm glad you told me. And ... if you'd like, I really hope we can still see each other. I'm not just saying that. I mean it.'

'Really?'

'Really. You have my number, and my email address. I'll always be happy to hear from you, Daisy. You can tell Rosie the same thing. Fin, too.'

She didn't cry until much later, when she'd carried all the boxes out of the car and upstairs to the new flat. Not until she'd opened the box with the coats, and seen the beach picture, nestled on the top.

And then she sat on the carpet with her back against the wardrobe door and cried and cried.

On the Sunday, Jonathan looked after the kids while Amelia came with her to Ikea, muttering something under his breath about preferring a chemotherapy session to a trip to Ikea ... They bought a couple of big, vibrant canvas pictures, snow-white bed linen, a modernist rug, and some new dishes and glasses. They stopped at a florist's on the way back, and Amelia bought armfuls of daffodils and tulips, which she arranged into the new vases they'd bought.