The corridor was deserted, and led straight to Rory's ward in the direction Charlotte and Ellen took. Hugh tried not to be distracted by the entrances they pa.s.sed a operating theatres, children's cardiac, children's intensive care a although he felt as though he were avoiding the possibility that someone might be lurking in one of the side pa.s.sages. Somebody thin rose up to meet his cousins as they pushed open the doors to the ward they needed, but she was the sister in charge, and she'd only stood up behind her desk. 'We're here for Rory Lucas,' Charlotte said.

'Have you come far?'

Hugh was reflecting that her accent had made her sound fatter on the phone as Charlotte told her 'London.'

'You may as well all go in.'

Hugh couldn't help feeling this seemed ominous. 'How is he?'

'Comfortable. No change since you called. It was you, wasn't it?' When he a.s.sumed it must have been she said 'Furthest on the left.'

He was grateful to have his cousins to lead him past sleeper after sleeper fitted with tubes. He tried not to glance at them, though this felt like ignoring an intruder. Most of them were unattended and presumably unaware of it. Worse, Rory was equally unaware he was the opposite.

He was lying on his back, his head slightly raised by a pillow as if this might lift his awareness. Various tubes led to and from him, but Hugh wished he could feel more encouraged to see little sign of injury, not even plaster. Rory's expression was utterly blank, and Hugh had the distressing idea that the tubes were draining his personality, reducing him to an inert ma.s.s indistinguishable from the contents of the other beds. He didn't stir when Ellen made to hold one of his hands as Charlotte clasped the other. Hugh busied himself with bringing them chairs and fetching a third one, after which there appeared to be nothing to do beyond feeling guilty and useless. Smiling sympathetically across the aisle at a woman seated by an even older man's bed soon lost any meaning, and he'd thought of something to ask a nurse well before she came to write on Rory's clipboard. 'What was wrong yesterday?' he enquired of her. 'Why couldn't we visit him?'

The brawny girl nibbled her pinkish lower lip as she glanced along the ward, and Hugh thought she'd heard someone come in until he realised she was checking that the sister was on the phone. 'We had a bit of excitement with one of Rory's friends,' she murmured, 'didn't we, Rory?'

Ellen had ventured to take his hand at last. She turned up her free one and then hid it beside the bed. 'Are you saying someone came to see him?'

'Not till you all did. Are you glad they have, Rory?' When this produced no visible response the nurse said 'Another patient got a bit lively, that's all.'

Charlotte crouched restlessly forwards in the gap between Rory's bed and his insensible neighbour's. 'I a.s.sume it had to be more than a bit for us not to be allowed to come.'

'Sister didn't want any more of a panic.' The nurse turned her head an inch towards the peremptory clatter of the phone returning to its stand. 'I shouldn't think Rory minded waiting, did you, Rory? Your family's here now,' she said and retreated down the ward.

Was it her professional opinion that addressing Rory might revive him, or had she been trying to encourage the visitors? Hugh's face grew hot at the thought of talking to the absence that was his brother, especially in front of an audience that didn't consist only of their cousins. Nevertheless he was about to move his chair away from the foot of the bed, once he decided which of his cousins might find his closeness least unwelcome, when he heard a whisper at his back. 'It was him.'

At first Hugh was afraid to turn, and even when he did he couldn't tell which way he had. It confronted him with the old lady opposite, who was still grasping her husband's limp fingers, and with the question he had to ask. 'Who?'

'My Jack here.' She lifted his hand as if that helped her identify him and then let it subside. 'He was the one who was making the fuss,' she said.

'That's good, is it? Mustn't it mean he was conscious?'

'Not of his old Annie. The way he carried on it was more like he was having a bad dream and couldn't wake up.'

Hugh heard restlessness behind him. He couldn't look around, instead demanding 'Did you hear that?'

'What?' Ellen said with none of his nervous triumph.

'What this lady said.'

'Call me Annie, do.'

'We're all capable of hearing, Hugh. n.o.body's lost their wits.' Rather less sharply Charlotte added 'Did your husband actually say anything, Annie?'

'He did that. Said there was someone on the screen that shouldn't be.'

This seemed remote enough for Hugh to experience some fleeting relief. 'In a cinema, you mean?'

'I wish he'd been dreaming about all the times he took me when we were courting. We used to go to the pictures twice a week and he always bought me flowers as well. I sometimes dream about that when I'm going off to sleep.' Annie's eyes grew unfocused and moist before she appeared to remember the question. 'It wasn't any picture-house,' she said. 'You'd have thought he was on about the screen around your Rory's bed.'

Hugh tried to recapture his sense of triumph but was closer to regretting his insistence. 'What did he say about it?' Ellen asked somewhere behind him.

'We couldn't make half of it out, me and the nurses. They're a credit to the hospital, let me promise you. Your Rory's in the best hands.' Hugh was afraid she'd lost her conversational way again, and was on the edge of having to prompt her when she said 'He kept saying they were hiding behind the screen. On the floor, it sounded like, or maybe they went under the bed.'

Hugh had to ask the question. 'Who?'

'n.o.body they'd let in a hospital. Some man that was all bones and so dirty he left marks on the screen. Jack thought he was a big spider at first, he was going so fast, or maybe it was how he was going.'

Hugh heard movement behind him again as Charlotte said 'You seem to have understood quite a lot. Was that the half?'

It was clear to Hugh that she was inviting no more, but at the end of some visible musing Annie said 'One thing that was funny a well, you mightn't have thought it was. No, I don't think you would have.'

With enough impatience for all three of Rory's visitors Charlotte said 'What wasn't funny?'

'It was just they were doing something for your Rory and the screen really was round his bed.'

'But you didn't see anything,' Hugh urged.

'Do you know, he got me so I almost thought I did.' Perhaps Hugh's expression made her add 'Don't fret, it was just a shadow. n.o.body's that thin.'

Hugh was trying to decide whether he could risk looking behind him when Annie patted her husband's hand before levering herself to her feet. 'Will you keep an eye out for him while I go to the littlest room?'

'For your husband,' Charlotte said.

'There's n.o.body else for me to care about.'

This silenced Rory's visitors until Annie left the ward, but as soon as the doors met with a gentle thud Hugh said 'It was him.'

'I don't know why you sound so pleased about it,' Charlotte said.

'I'm not,' Hugh said and was provoked to turn to her. 'You know what I meant.'

'Perhaps I don't want to know.'

'You do, don't you, Ellen?' When she only held up her hands and lowered them as they strayed within her vision Hugh said 'Know, I mean, not want. I don't want either.'

'Then try not being so obsessed with it,' said Charlotte.

'That won't make it go away, will it?'

As he saw that they ought to be discussing how this could be achieved Charlotte said 'What are you imagining now? What sense does it make?'

Hugh felt his face grow blotchy, and was about to protest that it wasn't up to him alone to interpret the situation when he realised 'He stopped us coming last night, didn't he?'

'And the point would be . . .'

'Maybe he doesn't like us all to be together. Maybe he doesn't want us talking about him.'

'Rory can't, Hugh,' Ellen said as if addressing a patient.

'Maybe he's going to be able to now we're here. Maybe that's what he, not Rory, we all know who we're talking about, maybe that's what he's afraid of.'

'Ellen was talking about Rory.'

This felt like several rebukes compressed into one, but Hugh might have kept at his subject if he hadn't heard the ward doors b.u.mp discreetly open. Apparently both of his cousins welcomed the excuse to look away from him. 'Thanks,' Annie murmured as she returned to her husband's bedside. 'Sorry for going on about being thin. I didn't mean anyone here.'

Ellen's gaze fell inwards and did its best to hide. Before Hugh could revive his subject, if that was advisable within Annie's hearing, the doors emitted another polite thud and let in a tall pale figure. The pallor belonged mostly to a white coat, though the doctor's hair was on its way to matching. He frowned afresh at each patient he visited, scribbling observations on a clipboard, and gave Rory what Hugh hoped was a deft examination. Charlotte was opening her mouth to speak to him, since he'd acknowledged the visitors with no more than a single nod, when Annie said 'Excuse me, doctor, could I have a word?'

'Please,' he said and indicated the exit with the clipboard.

As he marched away as if impelled by his bent head with Annie in pursuit Hugh blurted 'Shouldn't we talk to him?'

'We're going to,' Charlotte said and sprang to her feet as though escaping from a trap.

'We'd better not all go crowding round him,' Ellen said.

'Just you go, Charlotte, and you can tell us what he says.'

Charlotte hurried down the ward but stopped short of the doors, the twin windows of which framed Annie's inaudible conversation with the doctor. As whichever door Annie was beyond let her reappear in full while Charlotte dodged past the other, Hugh said urgently 'What do you think while she's not here?'

Ellen gazed along Rory's immobile body at him for so many seconds that Hugh wondered if he had spoken too low. He was about to repeat the question when she said 'I can't see how talking about it will help. It might even do the opposite.'

'You mean you believe me?' This heartened him so much it left thought behind. 'We've got to persuade Charlotte,' he said.

'No we haven't. Maybe if we don't keep talking about it it'll go away,' Ellen said under most of her breath.

'Don't mind me,' Annie called across the aisle. 'I'm not listening.'

This made Hugh feel as if someone besides Ellen were, but he had to ask 'Wouldn't Rory want us to do anything we have to that'll help him?'

'I'm sure he would, only he can't know what that is.'

'But suppose we have to a' Hugh sucked in the opposite of a gasp, which left him briefly speechless. 'Did you see that?' he cried.

Ellen shook her head vigorously and seemed dismayed by the sensation. 'What now, Hugh?'

'His hand moved. His other hand.'

'I didn't see.'

'They do,' Annie contributed, if that was the word. 'It means they're still in there somewhere.'

'Has Rory that you've seen?' Hugh enquired, however impolitely with his back turned.

'Not that I've noticed, and I've been keeping an eye.'

'Ellen, I think I made him.'

He gazed at Rory's hand in the hope it might respond a just the twitch of a finger would do. 'I wish we could,' said Ellen.

'We can. I did, that's what I'm saying. Didn't you see, Annie?'

'To tell you the honest truth, I didn't.'

Hugh blundered to the seat Charlotte had vacated. He closed his hands around Rory's and then relinquished it, not merely because it felt limp as tripe and yet unnaturally warm, perhaps with sunlight through the window overlooking the bed, but in case he might appear to be manipulating it. 'You can hear us, can't you, Rory?' he said and found he didn't know how loud to speak, which left him uncertain where his voice might reach. 'Do you know what you want us to do?'

That was stupidly ambitious; the blazing of Hugh's face told him as much. Even urging Rory to signal yes and no with a finger, as he would in any number of films, might be. 'You know what we were talking about, don't you?' Hugh nevertheless insisted. 'Did he do this to you?'

No doubt someone was digging below the ajar window, and a breeze had brought the smell of earth in. 'Don't, Hugh,' Ellen said.

'Don't what?' Hugh retorted, fiercely for him. 'He doesn't seem to mind.'

'He isn't going to, is he?' Ellen's face worked as if she hardly knew how to shape it, and she sat forwards to lower her voice further still. 'You're just upsetting yourself and me as well. We both know the crash did this.'

'Yes, but what made him crash?'

As she gazed sadly at him Hugh was afraid that Rory would agree with her by indicating him with a finger. His brother didn't stir, however. Might a more explicit question rouse him? Hugh was searching for one that wouldn't sound like an attempt to displace his own guilt when the ward doors crept open. Their slowness unnerved him even once he saw they were admitting Charlotte.

He set about vacating her chair, but she waved him down. 'I'll sit at the end for a change.'

Ellen barely waited for her to finish. 'What did the doctor say?'

'Physically Rory isn't in a bad way at all. Not even any broken bones. The van's a wreck but his belt saved him.'

'You're making it sound as if that's bad somehow.'

'Of course that isn't, but a' Charlotte sat on the edge of the chair in the aisle. 'They've given him scans and everything else they do,' she said, 'and the doctor says they're going to change the treatment if there's no improvement soon.'

'I expect that's all they can do, isn't it?'

'It may be, but that's not my point. I couldn't get him to come right out and say it, but I don't think they know why Rory's in a coma. He couldn't tell me any reason at all.'

Hugh opened his mouth. He closed it at once a dismayingly, to no effect. The sound that was sc.r.a.ping his nerves continued with scarcely a break. While it was a cry he might very well have uttered, he'd last heard it from Charlotte in the tunnel. This time the powerless desperate almost shapeless plea was struggling from between Rory's slack lips. It took perhaps a minute to subside without rousing him, and then he was as inactive as before. Hugh waited until Ellen and Charlotte looked at each other and eventually, quite possibly reluctantly, at him. 'Do you believe me now?' he said.

TWENTY-FIVE.

As soon as the doors clumped shut behind Annie on her hasty way to lunch Hugh said 'What do you think's happening to you, Ellen?'

He wanted her to admit to living in a nightmare, Charlotte guessed. Her own instinct was to hope for an interruption a hope that Rory might cry out again and bring back the staff, not that their prolonged examination had identified any change a but the hope was so irrational that she would have been ashamed to betray it. 'Hugh,' she protested instead.