Someone who loves her. If only the nurse knew. I go round the side of the bed and gently squeeze her limp fingers, and then hold her hand as she held mine. I bend down and murmur, ‘Clare, it’s Gil. I am so sorry. Really I am. And you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be more than fine. I’ll make sure of that.’

I am screaming inside but the nurse gently urges me on. ‘Just chat about anything. It’ll help.’

I lean in. A memory is triggered. Something about the warmth of her hand takes me to the woods behind our childhood house, aged seven and five. Holding on to each other, we are running as fast as we can from a bearded man who had something in his hand and we’ve decided it’s a gun. Out of breath. Panting. Clare shouting ‘Gil, run run run!’

Now I’m thinking, ‘This time I’ll save you.’

‘I’m here sis,’ I whisper. ‘You’ll be OK. I won’t leave you.’

But Mr Lloyd cuts in. ‘I am sorry, Mr Peck, but I am afraid I have to ask you to return to the waiting room.’ They start to pull the curtains around her bed.

‘I’ll see you in couple of hours, sis.’ I am sure she squeezes my hand. Just faintly. I am certain.

I stand. At the door, I realise what I didn’t say, and it’s too late. But I can still help to rescue her. I murmur, ‘I love you, Clare’, seven times. Seven is a good number. That’ll work.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

THERE IS AN ICY GREY dawn as I cycle over Westminster Bridge. The air carries a hint of the Essex marshes. After Clare was taken to the operating theatre, the ward sister instructed me to go home. I should call Mum and Dad, but I tell myself it’s too early, they’ll be asleep. That is a convenient fiction. They will be at the kitchen table, trying to think and talk about anything but their worst fears.

There is almost no one on the streets, just weary immigrants traipsing from a night of underpaid cleaning to the bus stop. My face is numb with cold, but not my brain. It’s in anxious overdrive. I am close to where Clare had her accident. The orange shard of a broken indicator light gleams in the gutter: could it be from the van? I am momentarily shaken out of my rhythm. My foot slips on the pedal; the bike careers towards the kerb. I jerk back to true and depress the silver gear lever. As the chain clicks to a more comfortable gear, I wonder whether I’ve got time to file my ‘no-tax-rises-under-Labour’ scoop, and whether that would be the right thing to do.