‘Have you been told about this? No. OK. Of course you haven’t. Shall we take a seat? I’ll explain it all.’

Harry didn’t move. ‘I met your friend Karene after Caroline left me?’

‘Yes. That’s my understanding.’

‘And she’s hired you?’

‘Correct.’

They stood for a moment in silence before Harry said, ‘Then she should tell me everything. If it’s as you say and she’s the person who cares the most.’

Bloom smiled. She could see the effort it was taking for him to suppress his shock.

‘She really does,’ said Bloom.

34

Karene hadn’t moved. Her eyes were swollen and a little red. Bloom felt terribly sad for her friend.

‘He’d like to hear it from you,’ she said.

Karene straightened her back and squared her shoulders. Harry led them to three armchairs set in front of a large window that overlooked a neatly trimmed lawn and Karene explained how she and Harry had met and fallen in love.

‘And after the bomb?’ he said, looking uncomfortable with the details so far.

Karene explained his injuries as they’d been immediately after the explosion and then how she’d searched all the hospitals desperately trying to find him.

‘You turned up in Exeter Hospital about seventy-two hours later with head injuries that weren’t there on the night. Those cuts and bruises weren’t there. I know I couldn’t have seen a skull fracture but the wound on your head is severe and would have been bleeding heavily. There was just a small graze.’

‘None of the other injured people went to Exeter,’ said Bloom. ‘They were all admitted to Derriford Hospital on the night of the ball.’

‘So, what are your theories?’ Harry asked.

Jameson joined them and perched on the armrest of Bloom’s chair.

‘We’re fairly sure someone took you away in an ambulance but after that we’re unclear,’ said Bloom. ‘But during this period you sustained your head injury and possibly the memory loss too.’

‘Possibly the memory loss?’

‘It’s impossible to say whether your memory was affected by the initial impact of the bomb, or by whatever caused that head injury, or by something else entirely,’ said Bloom.

‘Augusta thinks the later injury may have been used to mask a surgical procedure,’ said Karene.

‘We wouldn’t know that for sure without an MRI scan,’ said Bloom.

‘They did one here. The day I arrived.’

Bloom looked at Jameson.

‘Leave that one with me,’ he said.

‘What are you expecting to see?’ asked Harry.

‘Well, if someone intentionally damaged the memory centre of your brain we might see evidence of that. The track of a drill, for instance.’

‘A drill?’

‘You’d have been unconscious,’ said Bloom.

‘I wouldn’t remember if I wasn’t.’

Bloom and Karene fell quiet as they both considered the truth of his statement.

‘Why would someone do that to me?’ he asked.