A yawning Fox left with assurances to get to the bottom of it all. The hospital said they’d probably discharge me the next day, all being well, and my father and Jenny talked about a nice hotel on the coast near St Ives that they’d heard was lovely. ‘Unless you want to go straight back to Pendarlin?’ my father mumbled with some trepidation.

I thought miserably of Digby chasing his tail round the lawn. Of Seb glowering at me with such hatred by the fire; of me running for my life out of the back door. ‘In a few days, perhaps,’ I said quietly.

The moustached nurse arrived back at my bedside. ‘You look wiped out, my sweet, and I need to change the dressing on your head. Come on, Mum and Dad. Our patient needs some rest.’

I caught the look Jenny shot my father at the nurse’s words, anxious but happy at the same time – the hand she slipped into his. I didn’t bother to correct the mistake.

* * *

My dreams were full of barks and screams and a crying Gar sitting in her wicker chair on the lawn of Pendarlin behind a piano that played itself, Debussy’s music soaring into the sky. I woke just after five, sweating and disorientated. Moustache Face had gone off duty, apparently, and in her place was a neat little nurse with cropped hair and a mole like a Jelly Tot on her neck. She smoothed the rumpled bedclothes and poured me a glass of water, helping me to drink it like she would a child.

‘You’ve had an awful shock, Maggie,’ she said, as I mumbled about being pathetic. ‘It’s going to take a while. You have to give yourself time. The morphine will make you feel odd too.’ She moved the roses beside the bed so she could put the water down. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they, you lucky thing. Who are they from?’

I shook my head as a hundred bunches of unwelcome lilies pirouetted over the bedspread like the hippos in Fantasia. I felt my eyes well up.

‘All right there, lovie. Don’t upset yourself.’ She produced a clean white tissue from a box. ‘Is there someone you’d like me to call for you?’

‘Not really, thanks.’ I shook my head again, feeling utterly alone. The tears came then, a deluge I thought might never stop.

I must have dozed off again for a while. I woke with a start; I could hear the inane chirrup of a game-show from the television down the corridor, and then a door closed and all was quiet. I was slipping off to sleep again when footsteps approached down the hall – two sets of them, slightly out of rhythm. I expected them to keep going, but outside my door, they stopped. My heart skipped a beat. What if Seb had convinced Fox he was innocent? He’d obviously mastered the art of persuasion …