So far, Angel had not been back in to work. In fact, she was frightened to. The new manager had been phoning the flat, but she said she was ill and couldn’t come in.

‘Ill my arse,’ he snapped after their last brief conversation, and slammed the phone down.

All of which meant that she was probably out of a job again, but she felt too wound up right now to even care. Someone had tracked her down and through her they had found and beaten Tom. And now other things were happening. When she’d come out of the flat this morning, there had been a big man standing on the corner of the road. Just standing there, doing nothing. She’d flagged down a cab and got in, and directed the cabbie to the police station, but before the cab had pulled away from the pavement she looked back, and the man was still there, staring after her. A moment later, he was walking in the direction of Tom’s flat.

Angel felt her stomach cramp with fear.

Then she told herself not to be stupid. The man could be going anywhere, to the corner shop, anywhere. But . . . he had seemed to be watching her. And when she’d departed, he’d definitely been walking toward the flat. To do . . . what?

No. She was imagining things. It could be the same man who’d threatened her, but she couldn’t be sure. She was hyped up from what had happened to Tom, she had to let it go now. She told herself that, over and over, as she paid the cab off at the hospital, and walked what seemed like miles along the corridors, until she got to the ward where Tom was.

Or had been.

Someone else was in Tom’s bed.

Every muscle clenching in tension, she ran to the nurses’ station.

‘Mr Tom Sibley. He was here yesterday, is everything all right?’ she asked, feeling her chest constrict, her airways close, anxiety grabbing her.

‘He’s been moved to D3,’ said the nurse behind the desk.

‘But he’s OK?’

‘D3,’ said the nurse, then the phone rang and she picked it up, cutting Angel off.

Angel went back along the corridors to the lift and got in, alongside trolleys with sick people being wheeled by porters and screaming kids in prams with their harassed mothers. She emerged on D3 and hurried to the nurses’ station there, but then she spotted her Aunt Lil in the waiting area and went to her instead. Lil smiled when she saw Angel and once again hugged her, which still felt weird.

‘Is Tom all right?’ asked Angel, dread creeping through her body.

‘Yes! They moved him up here because his condition improved. He’s come round! I was talking to him only a minute ago.’

‘Oh thank God.’ Angel almost collapsed onto a chair. She felt like weeping with relief.

Lil crouched down in front of her and stroked her arm. ‘Come on, love, no need to worry now, he’s all right.’