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She was there the next afternoon, perched cautiously on the edge of the chair as if she didn't trust it to hold her weight although she was as thin as a stick. She hadn't brought magazines or fruit or any of the things that the other visitors brought, but instead she pressed something into his closed hand, and when he opened it he saw a pebble, smooth and still warm from her own dry, grubby hand, so that it seemed like a curiously intimate gift. Theo wondered if she was simple. He was sure there was a more politically correct term but he couldn't remember what it was. His brain felt foggy and he supposed it was the drugs.

She wasn't inclined to talk but that was alright because neither was he. She did tell him though that her name was Lily-Rose, and he said, "That's a pretty name," and she smiled a small, shy smile andsaid, "Thank you, it's my own," which seemed an odd thing to say.

A nurse came by to take his temperature. She stuck the ther-mometer in Theo's mouth and, smiling at Lily-Rose, said, "I think your Dad'll be discharged tomorrow," and Lily-Rose said, "That's good," and Theo said nothing because he still had the thermome-ter in his mouth.

Jackson came in the evening and Theo was touched because he seemed genuinely concerned about him. "You're going to have to look after yourself, big man," he said, and he patted his hand and Theo felt tears prick his eyes because no one ever touched him except for probing medical fingers. And the cold touch of the yellow-haired girl. Lily-Rose. Jackson looked as if someone had beaten him up again and Theo said, "Are you okay, Jackson?" and Jackson looked pained and said, "That would very much depend on your definition of 'okay,' Theo."

She walked him to the taxi, holding his elbow as if she would prop him up if he fell, although she didn't look strong enough to support a lupin.

The taxi driver and a nurse helped Theo inside the taxi. The nurse held the door open for Lily-Rose. Lily-Rose's dog jumped in but jumped out again when it realized she wasn't following. Theo wanted to write down his address and telephone number for her, but he didn't have any paper. Lily-Rose said, "Here, use this," and gave him a small white card, and it was only when he'd written down his address and phone number that he turned the card over and realized it was one of Jackson 's. He gave her a puzzled look and said, "You know Jackson?" and she said, "Who?" but the nurse shut the taxi door and the driver pulled away. Both the nurse and Lily-Rose stood on the pavement and waved at him. Theo waved back and thought how absurd it was that when he thought she was going to climb in the taxi with him his heart had given an extra little beat of joy.

He'd only been away for two days and yet his house had already begun to grow strange to him. His inhaler was still sitting on the hall table. The rooms smelled stale so Theo opened all the windows and thought he might buy a perfumed candle, an expensive one, not the ones that smelled of cheap vanilla and air freshener. He went upstairs to the spare bedroom, "the incident room," Jackson had called it, and saw it through the eyes of a stranger for the first time, saw how macabre and frightening it might seem.

He sat down at the computer and went online to the Stationery Store and ordered storage boxes, pretty ones that had flowers printed on them, and thought he would box up everything and label it properly and then perhaps he would ask Jackson to give him a hand putting them up in the loft. Then he went to Tesco.com and ordered groceries, but he didn't go to "My Favorites" because he knew his favorites were killers – frozen cheesecakes and ice cream, Danish pastries and full-fat yogurts, and instead he started a new list of skim milk and oatmeal, vegetables and fruit and wholemeal bread and large bottles of Evian and thought it looked like a miserable shopping list. It wasn't that Theo was feeling bet-ter or more cheerful or that he could see a positive future for himself, it was just that he kept thinking about the way he had clung onto life when it was being taken away from him, how he had fought to stay alive on Christ's Pieces. Laura hadn't been given the chance to fight but he had and maybe that meant something, although exactly what, he wasn't sure.

He was about to go to the online checkout when he thought twice about it and went into the pet-food section instead and or-dered six cans of "premium dog food." Just in case. He paid and signed out and turned the computer off.

Then he waited.

Chapter 16. Caroline

She hadn't told anyone yet. She was four months' gone but she wasn't showing. Good abdominal muscles. She'd had a scan and everything was "normal" – she wasn't carrying twins or an alien. The midwife was a tight-lipped, superior cow and Caroline had considered lying when it came to the "Any previous pregnancies" question but she would be easily found out so she just said, "Yes, twenty-five years ago, the baby was adopted" (which was true). She could see the midwife doing the maths in her head, twenty-five years ago "Caroline Edith Edwards" would have been twelve. The midwife raised an eyebrow and Caroline felt like saying, "Fuck off, bitch," but she didn't because that would have been Michelle speaking, not Caroline Edith Edwards.

Caroline would have liked to talk about the increased risks of having a baby at forty-three, but she could hardly say, "Actually I'm six years older than you think," could she? And anyway, this baby felt anchored in, it felt whole and healthy, it felt like it had intentions.

She tried to imagine announcing to Hannah and James that they were going to have a baby sister (or brother, but she was sure it was a girl), she could imagine their expressions of disgust and jealousy then the sly little conspiratorial smiles as they planned the horrors they could perpetrate on it. Caroline put a protective hand on her stomach and felt the cold jelly that the midwife cow hadn't bothered to wipe off. And Jonathan – how could she tell Jonathan? Darling, guess what, you're going to be a daddy again," and he would puff up with pride at having his seed proved good, because it wouldn't be a baby, a person, it would be another thing, like the new John Deere, or Hannah's bay gelding, a dressage pony that was much too big for her, so with any luck she'd fall off and break her neck. (She really mustn't think things like that, it might be bad for the baby.) Dressage, that was Rowena's new plan for Hannah, "Never too early to start learning control," she'd said over a "luncheon" that she'd invited Caroline to in "my cosy little cottage," i.e., not the bloody great house you've taken away from me. Dressage. It was so English, so anal. Jemima, needless to say, was an expert.

"'You don't mind me asking you this, dear, do you?" Rowena said, leaning closer to her over the remains of a poached salmon that someone else must have cooked because Rowena could barely find the bread knife. "But, how shall I put this…" Her pale blue eyes were distant, almost visionary, and Caroline thought, I can't stand this. "Am I knocked up?" she intervened helpfully, and Ro-wena gave a little twitch of unease at Caroline's vernacular. "No, I'm not." Caroline was very, very good at lying.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." And she watched Rowena struggle to suppress a smile of relief as she said, "Shall we take coffee in the garden?"

It was the first time she'd been to a service at St. Anne's, the first time she'd heard him preach a sermon. He looked less like himself in his starched white Sunday surplice and she wondered who made it so white and starched, was it some "lady" he paid? He didn't mention God very much, which Caroline was grateful for, and he rambled a bit, but the general tenor of the piece was that people should all be nicer to one another and Caroline thought, Fair enough, and the ten people in the congregation, including Caroline, all nodded genially at this message and when the service ended everyone shook hands, which struck Caroline as quite Quakerly. She had gone to religious services all the time when she was in prison, just because they provided a break in the routine and the chaplains were always particularly pleasant to her, which was probably because of what she'd done. The worse the crime, the more the chaplains tended to like you if you turned up in the chapel. One lost lamb and all that.

He stood at the door and shook everyone's hands again as they left and he had a kind word for everyone, of course. She made sure she was the last person to leave the church and half expected him to invite her for a cup of coffee, or even lunch, but he didn't, he just said, "It's nice to see you here, Caroline," as if she were a new convert, and she felt absurdly disappointed but she smiled and said something inconsequential before wandering off round the churchyard, hoping that maybe he would follow, but he went back inside St. Anne's.

She'd never been in love with anyone since Keith and that had just been some crazy teenage thing that, in the normal way of things, should have petered out into an indifferent divorce. It felt good to be in love again, she felt it gave her back some of the personality she'd lost. She loved the bug, of course. Tanya. But that was a different kind of love, an elemental kind. She hadn't loved her then, not in a way she understood anyway, it was something she'd learned since, in the intervening years of absence. And even though it had come to her too late it still helped to fill all those missing years. Retroactive love. It wouldn't feel like that for Tanya of course. She didn't know about all the love her mother had for her, not unless Shirley told her ("Your Mummy loved you so much, but she just couldn't be with you"). She had made Shirley promise to treat her as if she were dead and to look after the bug. She'd loved Shirley in that elemental way too or she wouldn't have done what she did. A fresh start. That's what she'd said to Shirley, "Take Tanya away, give her a fresh start, be the mother to her that I can't be." Although obviously not as articulate as that because of the

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