Sunday and Monday in hospital and lots of visitors: Caroline; Bryony; Alice; Laura and Jenny, from the library; the police (several times) asking if she could now recall Thursday evening; Father Bernard, in his black cassock, full of jokes and laughter, but ending his visit with prayers; Patty, bustling in, all concerned, carrying a pot plant in a flimsy carrier bag, and worrying about which Tube would take her back to Waterloo.  Patty was all over Hilary again, inviting her to stay at her house when she left hospital, twittering, “Anything I can do!  Anything I can do!” 

“I've got the measure of Patty now,” said Hilary to Alice on Monday evening.  “She’s a bored housewife.  She craves excitement.  It was very exciting, last autumn, meeting her friend’s daughter and gossiping about Water Langley in the 1950s.  Then things got hairy in Iran and it was more interesting gossiping with that diplomat’s wife, Pam.  Now I'm in hospital, I'm exciting once more.”

“You sound just like your mum, Hil!  I can hear Margaret saying all that!” retorted Alice, and Andy, who was sitting with them in his white coat, grinned.  He came to see her several times a day, but Hilary remembered to factor in Arabella.  You could talk to your ex.  It was civilised to talk to your ex.  “But you’re not going to Patty's,” Alice continued.  “You’re going to your grandmother’s in Water Langley.   Mum says Mrs Rayner arrives at Heathrow this evening.”

“Yes,” said Hilary.  “Mrs Armitage’s son is picking her up in his car… Mr Armitage, I suppose.”

Alice grimaced.  “He’s always been known as Mrs Armitage’s son.  Do you know when are they going to let you go home, Hil?  Because I'm worried that I won't be around to give you a lift to Water Langley.  I've got a flight tomorrow – LA.  I'm not back until Friday.  And I'm going to miss Mum’s birthday on Wednesday.”

“Mum’ll be all right,” said Andy.  “Robert and I will be there.”

“Don’t worry,” said Hilary, surprised and touched that Alice had presumed this to be her responsibility.  “Caroline says she’s going to drive me.”  Water Langley!  In a few days time, she would be in Water Langley, for the first time in two years.  Yes, she wanted to see her grandmother, but if only she didn’t have to go to Water Langley!

The following morning (Tuesday), Hilary was taken to see Mr Brooke, the neuro-surgeon.  “Will all the things I can't remember come back to me?” she asked him.  “The evening I was attacked, for instance?”

Mr Brooke looked at her over half-moon glasses, as he wrote something in her notes.  “Haven't the foggiest.”

“The police keep asking me about it,” she said.

“Well, my dear,” Mr Brooke replied, “there’s not an awful lot either of us can do about it.  Sometimes memory comes back.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  So the boys in blue will just have to wait - possibly indefinitely.”  He handed her the buff folder containing her notes.  “Right!  I'm telling Mr Tinsley’s team that, as far as I'm concerned, we can discharge you tomorrow.”

When she returned back to the ward, Nurse Sharon, a big smile on her face, told Hilary she could “go home” tomorrow.  Hilary's heart sank into the pit of her stomach.  Did they realise what they were discharging her to?  She couldn't cope with Water Langley now, all the pain and hurt she had left there two years ago, and, just for a moment, she contemplated staying with Patty in Wheaton.  She had made her life in London now, the Children’s Librarian at Great Peter Street Library, lots of friends, car-owner, living with Alice in Lorning, but looking forward to buy her own place one day.  But Granny had flown all the way from Australia to be with her - in Water Langley. 

She would have to be mature about it, she, the Children’s Librarian, car-owner etc.  She was being mature about the worst Water Langley hurt, wasn’t she?  She was talking to her ex, her Captain Wentworth. 

Using the ward payphone, she rang Caroline at work at Conservative Party Central Office, who, sounding very distracted, said she would ask for a day’s leave tomorrow.  Hilary walked back to her bed and picked up her book again.  It was visiting time and, for the first time since arriving in hospital, Hilary didn’t have a visitor, but she had had so many visitors, she couldn't complain.  Even Andy hadn't popped in today, but he was probably busy, on the medical ward.  She continued with her book, which Laura and Jenny from the library had brought her: “The Madwoman in the Attic” by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar – which was not as melodramatic as its title might suggest.  In fact, with its stodgy subtitle, “The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination”, it wasn’t really hospital reading at all, but it would have to do.  Caroline would be there in the evening.

“Hil!”  She looked up.  Andy was hurtling towards her, with long, heavy strides, his short hair dishevelled, as if he had combed it with his fingers, and he was wearing an open-necked check shirt and crumpled corduroys, his white coat slung over his arm. “Hil!” he called, throwing himself into the chair beside her bed.  “Can you remember anything about the evening you were attacked?  Please tell me you can!”

“No!  I really can't!  Mr Brookes, the neuro-surg…”

“Yes, I know who he is!” Andy snapped, burying his head in his hands.

“What’s the matter?” Hilary demanded.

“The bloody police think I attacked you!”

“No?””

“When I saw you, on Thursday night, being brought up on to this ward, with all those terrible injuries, I felt sick.  I nearly vomitged.  Do they really believe I would attack you?”

“I know it wasn’t you.”

He jolted up his head and faced her.  “But you can't remember who… anything about that evening?”

“No.  I'm sorry.”

“The police say you’re shielding me!”

“A few days ago, they did ask me if I'd had any… ex-boyfriends - but I didn’t mention you.”  This was the first time, since Hilary had been in hospital, that either of them had referred to their being in love for three years.  An awkward pause.  “I'm being discharged tomorrow,” Hilary said, to change the subject.

Andy's eyes widened.  “Are you?”  Then his face clouded again.  “They knew we’d been together.  Don’t know who told them, but they knew all right.  They were in the doctors’ residence, hammering my bloody door down, at seven this morning, weren’t they?  Two uniformed police officers escorted me through about every corridor in this hospital, as if I was a bloody axe murderer!  They drove me into the police station in a police car, took me into this bare interview room, just a table and a desk like the bloody Lubyanka, firing questions at me…  Then, I got myself together a bit.  I come from a family of lawyers, don’t I?  I rang Dad… I felt so ashamed, Hil, so, so ashamed!

“Dad rang this firm of solicitors he knew in London straightaway, but I had to wait in this horrible interview room, with this bloody sarky constable saying, every five minutes, “Only the guilty ones ask for their solicitor.”  Eventually, I got this solicitor, Martin Proctor, and I answered their bloody stupid questions.  Going round and round in circles, they were, until Martin Proctor said, “You haven't got any evidence against my client, have you?”  He said to me afterwards that they were putting the pressure on to get me to confess.  As I walked out that police station, out into the street… Oh Hil, it was just good to be outside, to breathe the fresh air.

“When I got back here, I just sat in my room for an hour, staring at the wall.  Then I thought… damn it!  I haven't done anything wrong.  I went and saw Dr Ranger, my consultant.  He was very good actually, got me a cup of coffee from the drinks machine, and told me to take the rest of the day off.  So I’ve come to see you, hoping that you’d remembered something.”

“Andy,” asked Hilary, “what were you doing on Thursday evening?  I mean, do you have anything like an alibi?”

Andy shook his head.  “I was on call, wasn’t I?  I was sitting in my room, listening to Genesis records.”

“You weren’t called out at all?”

“Not until 12.30… a ninety year old woman with pneumonia.”  He sighed.  “Unfortunately.”  He sighed again.  “Please, let’s talk about something else now.  They’re discharging you tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“So, tomorrow, you’ll be at home, in Water Langley.”

Hilary shrugged.  Water Langley wasn’t her home anymore.

“Look, don’t bother Caroline about a lift.  I can take you.  I'm going to Water Langley tomorrow anyway, for Mum’s birthday.”

“Thanks, but I've already asked her.”

“Caroline’s got the Election.  I'll take you.”

“No, Andy,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.  “I think you should take Arabella.”

“No.”  There was an embarrassed silence, as if she had just committed a faux pas.

Hilary maintained her gaze.

“I'm not with Arabella anymore.  I chucked her, on Friday, didn’t I?”

Hilary felt an electric shock zap through her body.  “Why?”  It was the first thought that entered her head. 

“None of your business!...  Why do you think?”