'We've got to talk. We mustn't let anything stop us. You have to see that now.'

Charlotte wondered if he imagined he was exhorting Rory as well as both his cousins. His face was red with the effort or embarra.s.sment of attempting to take the lead. 'Depends what you want to talk about,' Ellen told him.

'I said.'

'Hugh, you know we love you, but you aren't too good at understanding women. Sometimes we just need to be left alone.'

His face grew more thoroughly suffused as he searched for somewhere to look, and Charlotte had to intervene. 'Not if we need help,' she said.

'You know we'll help you in any way we can, Charlotte,' Ellen said.

'That's right, we should help one another, but we can't if we don't know what's wrong.'

'I shouldn't think either of you is in any doubt about me.'

'I can't speak for Hugh, but I am. Honestly, Ellen, what's happened to you? If it's stress and I'm responsible, I'll take as much of it off you as I possibly can. Just tell me how.'

'That isn't what needs taking off me, and n.o.body can except me.'

'I'm not sure I understand that. In fact I'm sure I don't.'

'Oh, Charlotte, for heaven's sake. You're getting as bad as Hugh.'

'I'd say that was as good.'

'Sorry, Hugh. I'm sure Charlotte's right and it must be stress. What else would you expect just now?'

Ellen swung her free hand towards Rory before letting it drop out of sight, and Hugh held onto his brother as he turned to Charlotte. 'She can't have got like this since then, can she?'

'You're forgetting I lost my job.'

'So did I, but I'm still eating. Why won't you?'

As Ellen sprang to her feet a haphazard bouquet of perfumes filled and seemed to shrink the s.p.a.ce around the bed. If any of this had stirred Rory it would have been worthwhile, Charlotte thought, but he was as inactive as a statue. 'They used to say you had to be cruel to be kind, Hugh,' Ellen declared, 'but you're being kind to be cruel.'

'I don't mean to be.' Hugh struggled to hold her with his gaze as he said 'I just don't see why you have to do this to yourself.'

'Oh, Hugh.' Ellen stretched her arms wide, less like a preamble to an embrace than as if to ensure none could occur. 'Take a good look and say what you're seeing,' she said. 'Don't dare to be kind, that's all.'

'I'm seeing you. The same person you've always been.'

'Inside, you mean. Maybe I'm the same person, but not the same thing.'

'You aren't a thing.'

'I know how you feel about me, but don't bother any longer. That's what I am.'

As Charlotte caught up with Ellen's first comment and felt absurdly un.o.bservant not to have realised, Hugh turned his dismayed gaze on her, which she saw Ellen take as evidence that he couldn't stand any more of the sight of her. 'Can't you talk to her?' he pleaded.

'Ellen, you tell us. How are you expecting us to say you look?'

'Obese. Gross. Lumpish. Doughy. Pasty. Mammoth. Gargantuan. c.u.mbersome. Hippopotamish or whatever word there is. I haven't finished.' Ellen held out her hands as if they were objects she was disgusted to have picked up. 'Then there's putrid,' she said, 'and foul and rotten and tainted and septic and festering. Are you proud of me? I'll make a writer yet with all these words. And as for the smell a'

'Stop it, Ellen. You're just indulging yourself now.' As Charlotte saw Hugh's eyes flicker wildly in their sockets she felt as if she'd been delegated to calm her cousins down, although who could be calmer than Rory? 'Let's stay with how you started,' she said. 'You aren't overweight, you're very much the opposite. You weren't the last time we all met, and you haven't had time to put it on since.'

'Listen to her, Ellen. She's telling you the truth.'

'I've said before I'm glad we're so close, but you're both trying too hard. I know what I am.'

'All right then,' Charlotte said and stood up. 'Come and show me.'

Hugh didn't quite clutch at his brother's unresponsive hand. 'Where are you going?'

'Not far. We shouldn't be long. Let's hurry, Ellen. Stay there, Hugh.'

For a moment Ellen looked too concerned about him to leave him, and then she tramped like a mime of defiance to join Charlotte. As Charlotte hurried down the ward, which felt significantly narrower with the two of them abreast, she heard Hugh murmuring to Rory. 'Mum and dad don't know about you yet, that's why they're not here. They'll be down below us, all the way down. On their outback holiday they always wanted, but it means I can't get in touch.'

The ward doors cut off his monologue, and Ellen said 'Maybe we should leave them together for a while.'

'As long as you like,' Charlotte said and turned along the corridor.

It wasn't nearly s.p.a.cious enough a with its lack of windows, it underlined the remoteness of escaping from the hospital a but it was ample compared with the Ladies'. She had to lead Ellen into the room, which was narrowed by cubicles and additionally cramped by a pair of sinks. Only the mirrors above the sinks were important, except that Ellen jerked up a hand to block the view until she'd turned her back on them. 'Why were you so anxious to bring me in here?' she said.

'Just to look at us.'

'You aren't asking me to get undressed. You wouldn't care for that any more than I would, believe me.' When Charlotte shook her head and did her best to seem amused by the first suggestion, Ellen said 'Then why in here?'

'Because we can see us together. Just have a look.'

As Charlotte faced the mirrors she was confronted by Ellen's stubborn back. 'I've seen all I want to of myself,' Ellen said.

'Please, Ellen. See yourself with me.'

Ellen twisted around, her eyes wide enough to be parodying madness, but didn't stop until she was facing away from the mirrors again. In the instant during which she braved her reflection her hands wavered towards her eyes before sagging by her sides. 'All right, now I have. Can we go?'

'What did you see, Ellen?'

'You putting on a good show. Nearly managing not to look as if you'd rather not be standing next to this. Nice try at a smile but you couldn't quite keep it up.'

'If anything about you is making me unhappy it's the thought of you starving yourself for no reason at all.'

'You aren't going to convince me, Charlotte. I've seen how people look at me that don't need to pretend, look at me and say things they don't care if I hear, even people I used to care for. When I was at my appeal a'

She fell silent as a nurse blinked at the sight of the cousins facing opposite ways. 'Everything all right?' the newcomer said.

'Would you say anything wasn't?' Charlotte risked asking.

The nurse gave Ellen a longer look on her way to a cubicle. 'Needs feeding up,' she said.

Ellen barely waited to emerge into the corridor. 'She must have heard you going on at me, that's all.'

'Why would she lie about your health even if she did hear? She's a nurse.' When Ellen looked determined to remain unpersuaded Charlotte said 'Shall we ask a nutritionist? There ought to be one in the hospital.'

'Don't go to any more trouble on my behalf.' Ellen gave in to a secret smile, or at least her mouth winced. 'If I'm supposed to be deluded, what about you? What was all that fuss in the tunnel about? Are you blaming Glen for that as well?'

'Maybe what he said.'

Hugh was murmuring to Rory and clasping his hand as though it were a lifeline for at least one of them. Charlotte pushed the door open, and as she followed Ellen she abandoned caution. 'I'll say I was having a nightmare if you will,' she said.

'And us,' said Hugh. 'Now we're agreed, let's really talk.'

'All right, we're having nightmares. Let's deal with them like adults.'

'We have been, haven't we? We've been helping each other with what's wrong with us. If we hadn't we'd never have got here for my brother.'

'We did,' Charlotte agreed, taking her seat at the foot of the bed, 'and do you know what else is important?'

'What?' Hugh said, not entirely eagerly.

'We started before we heard from Glen. We don't need anything he said to explain what's happening to us.'

'You mean you're going to,' said Ellen.

'I think I know what it is in my case. I'm feeling closed in by all the changes I'm surrounded by at work.'

'Sounds simple,' Hugh admitted.

'And you're confused by all the ones at yours. And Ellen, don't you feel we're trying to change your image and maybe secretly you think it's for the worse? As for Rory, he was in an accident. I don't see why we have to look further than that.'

'You said the doctor had to,' Hugh objected.

'I suppose I was really saying they haven't sorted out the coma yet. That doesn't mean they haven't got the treatment right. Perhaps they have.'

This sounded feeble if not desperate, even to Charlotte. She felt as though she were trying to explain away not just his condition but with it Rory himself. She mightn't have been totally surprised if he'd risen up or at least made some sign of protest, but it was Ellen who responded. 'I'm sorry, Charlotte, but you're wrong.'

'You didn't speak to the doctor.'

'I wasn't thinking of him.'

Had a cloud settled over the sun? It couldn't have drawn the walls inwards. Ellen extended her hands and s.n.a.t.c.hed them out of sight while Hugh's gaze ranged back and forth as if he'd lost control of it. He seemed about to utter the unspoken question when he stumbled to his feet and whirled around to glare out of the window. 'Who's down there?'

Apparently n.o.body was, or n.o.body that he could see. In a few moments he turned around as though groping for a direction and, having located the chair, dropped into it. 'He doesn't like us talking about him,' he muttered, and Charlotte saw the bed shudder.

Hugh had b.u.mped it, she told herself. Certainly his brother gave no unequivocal sign of having heard the remark, let alone understood it. 'What makes you say that?' Ellen said just as low.

'We'd just started talking about that night at Thurstaston when Rory had his crash,' Hugh said as if he could hardly bear to realise. 'And I don't know about anyone else, but I've been getting worse since we talked about coming here, never mind while we've been doing it. It's like he doesn't want us all together in case we figure out too much about him.'

Before Charlotte could speak Ellen said close to inaudibly 'Have you seen him?'

'I don't know.'

'Have you, Charlotte?'

'What do you think? How is any of this going to help? Don't kick the bed or whatever you're doing, Hugh. That won't either.'

'I'm not.'

Perhaps she hadn't glimpsed a momentary tremor, and she was about to apologise when Ellen said 'I have.'

'Oh, Ellen, how can you a'

'More than seen. I think I've touched him. I didn't tell you I went back to Thurstaston.'

She was speaking so quietly it might have been out of misplaced respect a not, Charlotte thought, for anyone's intelligence. 'What happened?' Hugh whispered.

'He's in the cliff. He made me put my hand in. He nearly got hold of me. Don't make me remember any more.'

'He's already got hold of us, though.'

Charlotte felt as if her head were a lightless cell with no room for her spirit to stand up, part of a prison that her cousins had erected with their muttering. They'd shut her in with their gullibility, and she was all the more resentful when Hugh said 'Can't you feel it now?'

'What do you want me to feel?'

'He's talking to everyone, Charlotte. It isn't just about you.'

Ellen's stare suggested that her face a indeed, her whole body a was somewhere she was desperate not to be. Hugh's eyes jittered in their sockets as though nothing they showed him were capable of rea.s.suring him. He and Ellen were aggravating their own problems, Charlotte thought, and so would she unless she told them so. She was taking a breath when Rory spoke.

At least, the sound had ambitions to be a word. It was certainly the best he could achieve along the lines of a refusal or a denial. It was feebler than his previous cry, not loud enough to bring any of the hospital staff. Hugh and Ellen might have imagined that he was sinking deeper into a nightmare, so deep that it swallowed most of his plea, but wasn't it equally likely that he was protesting about the arguments around him? 'It's getting worse for him as well,' Hugh said. 'We've got to do something while there's time.'

Ellen seemed reluctant, though by no means as much as Charlotte, to ask 'What?'

'We can talk about that on the way. We have to go back.'

His gaze strayed towards footsteps approaching down the ward. Charlotte hoped they belonged to a nurse or someone more authoritative who might intervene somehow, but it was Annie. 'Going somewhere nice?' she said.

TWENTY-SIX.

Ellen felt less alone for having admitted the truth about Thurstaston until Hugh whispered 'Everyone else should stay here. I'll go.'

'Rory doesn't have much choice, Hugh,' Charlotte said.