Terrified of becoming dependent on the unparalleled emotions she was experiencing with Alex, she’d completely run away since her return from New York. She had spent only two nights with him, and those so tightly coiled that she defied physical contact. She needed to let things calm down, and find her single self again, so she’d taken refuge in her obligation to catch up on long overdue work in the editing suite. Then came the milestone of her twenty-four-hour test at Harefield the previous Friday, six months after the transplant. He’d exchanged a shift on a weekend day to drive her, and he’d waited while she had the wires and monitors attached, stayed with her throughout the wearying ordeal. She was brittle, unwell, fractious with him: but he’d been here before, seen it all, and he took it in stride. At times his patience with her was almost an irritation. Did she want to make him angry?

When Alex dropped her back at Battersea after the tests, his face mildly confused, Grace was a fury. “Don’t play with people’s emotions, Lucy. You’re not the only person who’s ever been hurt. Isn’t it time to leave the wounded child behind and live like a woman?”

That had stung. It was unprecedented from her closest friend, who’d never spoken to her that way before. And, oh God, yes! She felt the blow—knew its truth. Who understood better than she how well Alex hid his own feelings, what a consummate performer he was? Wasn’t it his habit to relegate his private pain in the interests of anyone who, he perceived, depended on his strength? Yet the humanity of the man was, for her at least now, always to the fore. Grace had accused her—with justification—of being too selfishly immersed in her own drama. She could see she was repeating the patterns of her past, twisting back on herself in looping coils. But what would lead her out? Nevertheless—or possibly because of this—she’d avoided Alex in the days leading to the Easter break, burying herself in work and knowing he would do the same. She hadn’t glanced at the Dee material for the whole fortnight since her return.