"Another time perhaps."
"No, now." Fergus caught at his arm. "We want to know what's going on. Does Jinx remember something?"
"I suggest you ask her." Alan looked down at the restraining hand. "You're welcome to come and talk to me any time you like, just so long as you make an appointment first. But at the moment"-he placed his hand over the young man's and prised it off his arm "I've more important things to do." He smiled amiably and eased in behind the wheel. "It's been nice meeting you again, Fergus. Give my best wishes to your mother and brother." He shut the door and gunned the Wolseley to life, before spinning the wheel and roaring away down the drive.
When Sister Gordon did her rounds at nine o'clock that evening, she found Jinx standing by her window watching the remnants of the day burn to crimson embers. "Isn't it beautiful?" she said without turning round, knowing by instinct who her visitor was. "If I could stand and look on this forever, then I would have eternal happiness. Do you imagine that's what heaven is?"
"I guess it depends on how static you want your heaven to be, Jinx. Presumably you've watched this develop from a simple sunset into glorious fire, so at which point would you have stopped it to produce your moment of eternal happiness? I think I would always be wondering if the moment afterwards had been more beautiful than the one I was stuck with, and that would turn the experience into a hell of frustration."
Jinx laughed quietly. "So there is no heaven?"
"Not for me. Bliss is only bliss when you come upon it unexpectedly. If it lasted forever it would be unbearable." She smiled. "Everything all right?"
Jinx turned away from the window. "Exactly the same as it was half an hour ago, and the half hour before that. Are you going to tell me now why it's so important to keep checking on me?"
"Perhaps the doctor's worried that you've been overexerting yourself. You put the fear of God into me this afternoon with that wretched walk. It was too far and too long."
"It wasn't, you know," said Jinx idly. "I spent most of the time hiding." She smiled at the other woman's surprise. "I saw my brother coming and dove for cover in one of the outside sheds." She glanced back towards the window. "Dr. Protheroe told me he was expecting a visit from my father,'' Jinx lied easily. "So do you know if Adam ever came? I thought he might pop in afterwards to visit me."
"I believe his solicitor came," Sister Gordon said, plumping up the pillows and smoothing the sheets, "but I don't think your father did."
Jinx pressed her forehead against the glass. "Why hasn't Dr. Protheroe been to see me?"
"He's taken himself off for a few hours R and R. Poor fellow," she said fondly, wishing, as she often did, that she hadn't saddled herself with Mr. Gordon. "He has a lot on his mind one way and another, and no one to share his problems with."
Jinx wrapped her arms about her thin body to stop the shivering. Did he have Leo and Meg on his mind? And was it Kennedy who'd told him?
Sister Gordon frowned. "You've been at that window too long, you silly girl. Quickly now, into your dressing gown and into bed. No sense catching pneumonia on top of everything else." She clicked her tongue sharply as she opened the dressing gown and slipped it over Jinx's shoulders. "You were lucky that young couple arrived when they did on the night of your accident or you'd have started pneumonia then."
"It was certainly convenient," said Jinx impassively.
THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC-MIDNIGHT
The Wolseley swung through the clinic's gates, its headlamps scything a white arc across the lawn. It was after midnight and Alan slowed to a crawl to avoid waking the patients with the crunch of wheels on gravel. He felt no relief about coming home, no sense of welcome at his journey's end, only a growing resentment that this was all there was. The temporary euphoria that a bottle of expensive Rioja over a meal of langoustines in garlic butter had given him had evaporated during his careful drive home, to leave only frustrated depression. What the hell was he doing with his life? Where was the satisfaction in ministering to a clutch of rich bastards with overinflated egos and no self control? Why hadn't Jinx told him Meg and Leo were dead? And why couldn't he get the damn woman out of his mind?
He drummed an angry hand on the wheel, only to wrench it in alarm as the lights picked out the white flash of a face, inches from the near-side wing, disembodied against the blackness of the trees bordering the drive. Shit! SHI-IT! His heart set up a sturdy gallop as he slammed his foot on the brake and brought the crawling car to an almost instantaneous halt. Half-hourly checks, he'd said, and she was out here dodging bloody cars.
"Jinx," he called, fumbling open the door and hauling himself out and upright with a hand on the car roof. "Are you all right?"
Silence.
"Look, I saw you." God help him if he'd hit her. He used the red light thrown by his rear lamps to scan the grass verge behind the car, but there was no huddled body there. "I know you can hear me," he went on, staring into the trees, searching for her. He walked round to lean against the passenger door. Sooner or later she would have to move and he d see the flash of the white face again. "I think you're a fraud, Jinx. The amnesia's crap and I don't believe for one second that you tried to kill yourself. It was a setup, pure and simple, designed to get your father on your side, and it sure as hell worked, even if you probably did yourself rather more damage than you intended. So are you going to tell me what it's all about?" He waited. "I should warn you I'm feeling pretty bloody ratty at the moment, and my mood isn't improved by hanging around in my own sodding drive because one of my patients wants to play silly buggers. But don't expect me to give up tamely and leave you here. You move one muscle, girl, and I'll catch you. So are you going to show yourself, or are we going to wait this out till daylight? Your choice."
There was a blur of movement, so quick and so close that he was completely overwhelmed by it. He lurched to one side but pain exploded in his shoulder as the solid metal head of a sledgehammer tore his arm from its socket. He ducked away from another arcing blow and scrambled round the hood of the car towards the open door of the driver's seat. With an instinct born of desperation, he threw himself behind the wheel and slammed the door. But as he reached across his chest to force the gear clumsily into reverse, the sledgehammer burst through the windshield towards his face.
Amy Staunton looked at her watch. "What's Dr. Protheroe want half-hourly checks for anyway?" she grumbled. "The girl's been fast asleep since ten o'clock."
"Ours not to question why," said Veronica Gordon. "Ours just to do or die. Finish your tea. I can't see five minutes making much difference here or there."
He didn't know if it was sweat or blood that was pouring down his face. As the car accelerated backwards, he only knew that he was in agony. With a sense of unreality he watched the figure-a man-vanish into the darkness before the Wolseley's back end piled into a solid oak tree. What the hell was going on?
The door handle of number 12 rattled and the door was pushed half open as the black nurse looked into the pitch-darkness inside. She heard something, and with a start of fear, she felt about for the light switch. "Are you all right, love?" She flooded the room with light, glanced at the bed, where Jinx was threshing her sheets into a tumbled mess, then looked towards the French windows, where the curtains flapped in the breeze. Tut-tutting impatiently, she crossed the room to close and lock the window; then she went to the bed and placed a gentle hand on the woman's forehead.
As though galvanized by an electric shock, Jinx sat bolt upright in the bed, mouth sucking frenziedly for air. She couldn't breathe ... dear God, she couldn't breathe ... She clutched at her throat in a vain attempt to dislodge whatever was blocking her airway. But it was earth, filthy acrid earth ... and it was killing her ... NO-O-O! She flung herself off the bed and burst through the bathroom door, wrenching at the cold-water tap in the basin and ducking her head under the icy water. She drew in breath on a gasp of shock and let the sweet, sweet water wash the taste of death away.