He reached out for the portable phone and rang her number. But there was no answer.

Tiger was sitting up in the hospital bed. He was feeling sorry for himself and was not in the sunniest frame of mind. Erica sat beside him on the uncomfortable chair and did her best to cheer him up.

‘They say you can come home in a few days. It won’t be long now.’

Tiger spoke with care, enunciating the words as clearly as he could, ‘Bloody pain. Just want to fly.’

Erica squeezed his hand. ‘Hey! You’ve been lucky. So lucky. It could have been much worse. Let’s just be grateful for that, shall we? You’ll fly again one day, you know that. You’ll fly.’

Tiger shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Not now. Sorry. Not very good company.’

‘That doesn’t matter. You’re here. Still here. That’s what matters.’

‘And what about the shop? And the man in black?’

‘Oh, that seems to have died down. Nobody’s seen him since. I don’t think he can have had much success. They reckon he was a one-man band, and not a very good one at that. And there have been no more bricks through windows. It looks as though it was those yobs after all.’

‘So much for my secret society. Didn’t really do much good, did I?’

Erica stroked his cheek. ‘You did your best.’

Tiger inclined his head to one side and gazed into her eyes. ‘Do you still love me?’ he murmured. ‘Even after all this?’

‘Of course I still love you. I’m not going away, you know. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.’ Then she frowned with mock seriousness. ‘As long as you want to be stuck with me?’

Tiger forced his unwilling mouth into a smile. ‘Yes, please,’ he said. Then his eyes closed and he drifted off to sleep.

Christopher tried Maria’s number again that evening. But there was still no reply. Matt was out for the evening, Ellie was back in Africa and here he was sitting at his study desk in the glow of the desk lamp. He had not eaten. He didn’t feel like it. His appetite had deserted him. He couldn’t even face a drink. He didn’t know what he felt about anything any more. But he did know one thing: by tomorrow he would have to have both problems sorted out. One of them to allow him to be able to live with himself, and the other to allow him to be able to live with somebody else.