BC, his face the picture of sympathy, offers me a drink of water and then helps me to lift my head while I take a sip.

‘You knocked yourself out when you hit the deck.’ My sister, eyes red rimmed, kindly fills in my missing moments.

That would go some way to explaining the throbbing pain that’s got my skull in a vice-like grip.

‘They’re just keeping you in overnight for observation.’

I always wondered what that involved. Now I know. It involves me lying in a bed feeling pitifully sorry for myself while being ignored by hospital staff.

Still, no harm done if it’s only my head I’ve injured, I think. Then I realise that there’s a throbbing pain in my foot too and I remember the rather ear-splitting crack that came from that region as I hit the deck. It feels like there’s some kind of splint on it.

‘Is it broken?’

BC nods and Lauren bursts into tears – not for the first time, by the look of her. I lean back against the pillow and close my eyes. My dream of going to Peru has just evaporated before my very eyes.

‘Metatarsal fracture.’ Blake reads my thoughts. ‘They said it could mend in time. Six weeks, if all goes well. It’ll be close, but it’s not impossible.’

Six weeks. But is it really likely either?

BC bites his lip. ‘It could be eight though.’

Eight weeks.

‘They’ve put a removable plastic cast on so that you can start physio early.’

So, some good news then.

‘What on earth were you thinking of, Annie, climbing up there?’ Blake wants to know. ‘When you were drunk.’ He sounds so disappointed in me.

How can I tell him that I was thinking of him kissing my little colleague, Minny, of hearing him say I was past it, and that I too have disappointments of my own?

‘It’s my fault,’ Lauren butts in. ‘It’s my fault we were up there.’ But, quite wisely, she offers Blake no further information.

‘Where’s Jude?’ I croak.

She meets my eyes. ‘Gone home.’

A nurse bustles along to my bedside. She looks irritated at having her night-shift disturbed by someone dressed as a pineapple getting drunk and falling off a ladder. ‘How’s the patient?’

‘Disappointed in love, life and luck,’ I want to say but, of course, answer politely, ‘Not too bad.’

‘Hmm,’ she says.

Blake strokes my arm tenderly and I want to pull it away, but I can’t. All of my limbs feel weak and feeble.

‘Are you the husband?’ the nurse asks.

‘No,’ a familiar voice says. ‘I am.’

I may be hallucinating, due to having a bang on the head, but it looks to me as if that’s Greg standing there at the bottom of the bed. And he doesn’t seem best pleased.

Chapter 77

Chapter 77