The Jersey hotel where Tiger and Sam were staying overlooked the sea. The little restaurant served excellent seafood, but Tiger was happier with the steak and kidney pudding. They had a bottle of Spanish red with their meal and retired for the night at around half past eleven. Tiger said goodnight to Sam outside the door of her room.

She looked up at him. ‘Why don’t you come in? Then we can say goodnight properly.’

Chapter 19

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

Lucretius, c.94–55BC

Tiger did not appear at breakfast the following morning. Sam tapped on his door at eight thirty but he didn’t answer. She rang him on the internal telephone. No reply. Eventually she asked the manager if he could let himself into Tiger’s room to make sure everything was all right. The manager was reluctant. He suggested that Tiger might have gone out for a walk. The thought had occurred to Sam as well, but she had expected to see him at breakfast. At nine o’clock the manager telephoned Tiger’s room. Still no reply. When, at last, Sam persuaded him to take his pass key and let himself in, she wished that she had acted sooner.

Sam flew with him in the air ambulance, her face ashen, her body shaking. A stroke the doctor said. It was a pity they had not discovered him earlier. A pity that no one had been with him at the time. Sam considered the irony and injustice of it all. If he had agreed to have come to her room she would have been with him and been able to act more quickly. But then the very fact that she had been there would have raised other questions.

Would Tiger’s unwillingness to be unfaithful cost him his life? How stupid. How surreal. She could not believe it had happened the way it had. Here she was, sitting next to his bed, stroking the back of his hand, waiting for his wife to arrive, and blaming herself for the fact that she had not insisted they break into his room earlier, for taking him out to dinner…There seemed to be no end of reasons she could find why it was her fault.

She looked at his prone body, at the wires and the tubes and the drips. How could a man who was flying helicopters in the sky yesterday be so grounded and fettered to a bed just hours later?

The doctor came back into the room. ‘Miss Ross?’

She heard her name echoing. She looked up at him with a vacant stare.

‘The gentlemen you brought over here–from Southampton–I think they need to be taken back.’

‘But what about…?’

‘Mr Wilson’s wife is on her way. We’ll take good care of him until she arrives.’