And then in her unforgettable, breaking voice, sounding more strange than ever because it was so long since it had been used, Nicky said, ‘I thought I killed you.’

Her dark, fathomless eyes stared at the man. ‘I haven’t been allowed to see the newspapers. I thought they were hiding it from me. I thought I killed you.’

The nurse looked on in amazement: the patient was talking! And then she looked at Terence. All the calmness had gone from his face and she saw that he was shaking.

‘You didn’t kill me,’ he said, ‘but Nicky –’ and Terence Blue took a deep anxious breath ‘– I love you. I do understand the meaning of love.’ The agitation in his gaunt face was seen by both women and the words rushed out of his mouth. ‘I understood it that first night in your dressing room Nicky – I don’t know if you’ve been thinking all these years about that night in Brighton? I wasn’t any longer having an affair with Juliet, you misunderstood. Juliet wanted you to misunderstand. But it was my fault, all my fault. I had been in York trying to tell her about you being pregnant and us getting married but I felt sorry for her and I put it off. All these years they would never let me talk to you, tell you, they said you were too ill, that I was bad for you.’

The junior nurse couldn’t believe her ears. She knew enough about the trial to know he must be discussing something that had happened more than thirty years ago, long long before she was even born, good God I should never have allowed this, he sounds mad himself.

For a long moment Nicola Abbott stared at his face, as if she was balancing his anxious words in her mind. Then she said in the husky voice, and in an odd way she sounded much saner than he had, ‘I don’t think you understood Terry.’

For a moment she was silent again. ‘I’d put all that out of my mind years ago,’ she said finally, ‘they helped me to do that. After the coma you know I didn’t remember things clearly. There were pieces missing. And after a while – well it was all such a long time ago, and we were all so –’ and she paused before she said the word ‘– young.’

Terence Blue’s voice cracked with pain. ‘You forgot everything?’

In the small room there was just his uneven breathing, and Nicky’s breathing, and the breathing of the young nurse.

Then Nicky began again, most carefully, to speak: slowly, almost without expression, as if she wasn’t used to putting words together. She frowned sometimes at the effort to express herself.