He had left her, and Edie waited for Albert and Tess, who had taken to coming on the dot of visiting hour in the evenings since they had so much to discuss. Albert had actually begun to do something about the proposed ice cream parlour. He had visited the bank, and though the manager’s enthusiasm for the scheme had been somewhat lukewarm, at least, Albert said, he had not shot it down in flames. In fact he had promised to look into it, but had added that before he did so he would like to see Albert’s business plan.

‘Which must include your setting-up costs,’ he had reminded Albert, twinkling at him over the top of his spectacles. ‘And you should remember, Mr Payne, that Change of Use can sometimes take many months to obtain, especially if the authorities decide to be difficult.’

‘But if you approve my business plan and say that you think the scheme is not only feasible but likely to prove a winner, then I’m told the planning people are far likelier to grant Change of Use status,’ Albert had said eagerly. ‘My partner and I will begin to work out our business plan this very evening.’

That had been several days ago, and the business plan had not, if one were honest, progressed very far. Edie could not remember without an inward chuckle Albert’s horror at the price of a coffee machine, a fizzy drinks dispenser and a great many tall glasses. Poor man, he knew to the last farthing how to cost tobacco products, but take him outside his own sphere of reference and he was as innocent – or ignorant – as a child of two. Edie was just thinking that they had a long way to go before they would manage to produce the sort of business plan which a bank manager would consider workable when she heard the tramp of many feet and knew that visiting time had arrived. She had been leaning back against her pillows, but now she sat up straight. The hospital rule that one should be in bed during visiting hours meant that there was a scramble from patients who had been in the dayroom, listening to the wireless, gossiping and, she gathered, smoking like chimneys. They would be hurrying back to the ward, to leap hastily into rumpled beds and try to look as though they had been there for hours.

The doctor under whose charge she was thought she would be able to get around on crutches once an X-ray had shown that the broken bone was mending nicely, but this would almost certainly take twelve full weeks, of which she had only served two. Every time the doctor visited the ward she demanded to be allowed to get out of bed and practise moving around. But the limb was hoisted up on a pulley so even had she decided to ignore medical advice and try to walk, it was impossible. She could only obey instructions and hope that, by so doing, healing would come more quickly.