Had they taken the tall-boy? Suzanna idly wondered. Thanking Mrs Pumphrey for her help, she went back to have another look at number eighteen - its roof so covered in bird-shit it looked to have had its own private blizzard - then went on to the hospital.

3.

The nurse wore her show of compassion indifferently well. 'I'm afraid Mrs Laschenski's very sick. Are you a close relative?'

'I'm her grand-daughter. Has anybody else been to see her?'

'Not that I know of. There really isn't that much point. She's had a major stroke, Miss-.'

'Parrish. Suzanna Parrish.'

'Your grandmother's unconscious most of the time, I'm afraid.'

'I see.'

'So please don't expect too much.'

The nurse led her down a short corridor to a room that was so quiet Suzanna could have heard a petal drop, but that there were no flowers. She wasn't unfamiliar with death rooms; ha mother and father had died three years before, within six months of each other. She recognised the scent, and the hush, as soon as she stepped inside.

'She's not been awake today,' said the nurse, as she stood back to let Mind's visitor approach the bed.

Suzanna's first thought was that there'd been some colossal error. This couldn't be Mimi. This poor woman was too frail: too white. The objection was on the tip of her tongue when she realized that the error was hers. Though the hair of the woman in the bed was so thin that her scalp gleamed through, and the skin of her fare was draped slackly on her skull like wet muslin, this was, nevertheless, Mini. Robbed of power; reduced by some malfunction of nerve and muscle to this unwelcome passivity; but still Mimi.

Tears rose in Suzanna, seeing her grandmother tacked up like a child, except that she was sleeping not in preparation for a new day but for endless night. She had been so fierce, this woman, and so resolute. Now all that strength had gone, and forever. . .

'Shall I leave you alone a while?' said the nurse, and without waiting for a reply, withdrew. Suzanna put her hand to her brow to keep the tears at bay.

When she looked again, the old woman's blue-veined lids were flickering open.

For a moment it seemed Mimi's eyes had focused somewhere beyond Suzanna. Then the gaze sharpened, and the look that found Suzanna was as compelling as she had remembered it.

Mimi opened her mouth. Her lips were fever-dried. She passed her tongue across them to little effect. Utterly unnerved, Suzanna approached the bedside.

'Hello" she said softly. 'It's me. It's Suzanna.'

The old woman's eyes locked with Suzanna's. I know who you are, the stare said.

'Would you like some water?'

A tiny frown nicked Mimi's brow.

'Water?' Suzanna repeated, and again, the tiniest of frowns by way of reply. They understood each other.

Suzanna poured an inch of water from the plastic jug on the bedside table into a plastic glass, and took the glass to Mimi's lips. As she did so the old woman lifted her hand a fraction from the crisp sheet and brushed Suzanna's arm. The touch was feather-light, but it sent such a jolt through Suzanna that she almost dropped the glass.

Mimi's breath had suddenly become uneven, and there were tics and twitches around her eyes and mouth as she struggled to shape a word. Her eyes blazed with frustration, but the most she could produce was a grunt in her threat.

'It's all right,' said Suzanna.

The look on the parchment face refused such platitudes. No, the eyes said, it isn't all right, it's very far from all right. Death is waiting at the door, and I can't even speak the feelings I have.

'What is it?' Suzanna whispered, bending closer to the pillow. The old woman's fingers still trembled against her arm. Her skin tingled at the contact, her stomach churned. 'How can I help you?' she said. It was the vaguest of questions, but she was shooting in the dark.

Mimi's ryes flickered dosed for an instant, and the frown deepened. She had given up trying to make words, apparently. Perhaps she had given up entirely.

And then, with a suddenness that made Suzanna cry out, the fingers that rested on her arm slid around her wrist. The grip tightened 'til it hurt. She might have pulled herself tree, but she had no time. A subtle marriage of scents was filling her head: dust and tissue-paper and lavender: The tall-boy of course; it was the perfume from the tall-boy. And with that recognition, another certainty: that Mimi was somehow reaching into Suzanna's head and putting the perfume there. There was an instant of panic the animal in her responding to this defeat of her mind's autonomy. Then the panic broke before a vision.

Of what, she wasn't certain. A pattern of some kind, a which melted and reconfigured itself over and over again Perhaps there was colour in the design, but it was so subtle she could not be certain; subtle too, the shapes evolving in the kaleidoscope.

This, like the perfume, was Mimi's doing. Though reason protested, Suzanna couldn't doubt the truth of that. This image was somehow of vital significance to the old lady. That was why she was using the last drops of her will's resources to have Suzanna share the sight in her mind's eye.

But she had no chance to investigate the vision.

Behind her, the nurse said: 'Oh my god.' The voice broke Mimi's spell, and the patterns burst into a storm of petals, disappearing. Suzanna was left staring down at Mimi's fare, their gazes momentarily locking before the old woman lost all control of her wracked body. The hand dropped from Suzanna's wrist, the eyes began to rove back and forth grotesquely; dark spittle ran from the side of her mouth.

'You'd better wait outside,' the nurse said, crossing to press the call button beside the bed.

Suzanna backed off towards the door, distressed by the choking sounds her grandmother was making. A second nurse had appeared.

'Call Doctor Chai,' the first said. Then, to Suzanna, 'Please, will you wait outside?'

She did as she was told: there was nothing she could do inside but hamper the experts. The corridor was busy: she had to walk twenty yards from the door of Mimi's room before she found somewhere she could take hold of herself.

Her thoughts were like blind runners; they rushed back and forth wildly, but went nowhere. Time and again, she found memory taking her to Mimi's bedroom in Rue Street, the tall-boy looming before her like some reproachful ghost. What had Gran'ma wanted to tell her, with the scent of lavender?; and how had she managed the extraordinary test of passing thoughts between them? Was it something she'd always been capable of? It so, what other powers did she own?

'Are you Suzanna Parrish? Here at least was a question she could answer.

'Yes.'

'I'm Doctor Chai.'

The face before her was round as a biscuit, and as bland.

'Your grandmother, Mrs Laschenski . . .'

'Yes?, . . . there's been a serious deterioration in her condition. Are you her only relative?'

The only one in this country. My mother and father are dead. She has a son. In Canada.'

'Do you have any way of contacting him?'

'1 don't have his telephone number with me ... but I could get it.'

'I think he should be informed,' said Chai.

'Yes, of course.' said Suzanna. 'What should I . . . ? I mean, can you tell me how long she's going to live?'