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.She’sregained consciousness.I just heard a moment ago ‘With a gasp Maeve stopped and turned to him, and for a moment her face came alive.“She’s going to be all right then?”“Well, she’s talking and hearing and seeing, so it’s all looking good from that point of view.”“What else?” she demanded hungrily.“Well.she’s off the danger list.”“But what are they saying?”“It’s early days yet.You know very early days.They need to wait and see.”Instantly her mood plunged.“What do you mean, they need to wait and see? There’s something wrong, isn’t there? Tell me.”“Darling girl, they’re investigating.You know better than anyone that sometimes they don’t always find the problem straight away.”“So there is something wrong! What is it? Tell me!”She was taking great gulps of air and he hastened to calm her.“Remember, darling, the fall was a terrible thing.Her body needs time to mend.Quite a while.There’ll be rehabilitation, physiotherapy all the usual things.”Maeve shook her head and murmured, “No, no.”He persuaded her to continue down the stairs.She moved jerkily.“I must go and see her,” she said.“When you’re better, darling girl.When you’re better.”“I can’t bear it.I can’t bear it.She was so kind to me, Dadda.So kind.”Flashes of memory came to him from the long summer at Morne four years ago: a glimpse of Catherine taking Maeve off to show her something, a dress or it might have been shoes; then a picnic in the walled garden, Catherine and Maeve sitting on the grass talking companionably as though they were of an age, not eight years apart.Inevitably more painful and personal memories followed, of the weeks of his folly and the mortifying letter, but he shut these firmly from his mind.He walked Maeve into the small sitting room, to her favourite chair facing the TV.She pressed herself into a corner of the chair and drew her legs up under her.“She was so very good to me.So good, Dadda.”Terry heard the crack in her voice and thought: Dear Lord, please don’t let there be tears tonight.“If they’re talking of rehab and physio, there must be something seriously wrong,” Maeve cried.“I know it.I know it!”“Hand on heart, darling, they really don’t know.”“But she fell! She fell!”“We have to wait and see.That’s all we can do.”“I can’t bear it, Dadda.”“You can’t take all the worries of the world on your shoulders, darling girl.You must think of yourself.That’s your first duty.”But there was no soothing her during these periodic plunges into despondency and Terry wondered if he should cancel his meeting with Galitza.He asked, “You have been taking all your pills, darling, haven’t you?”But she had turned her face away from him, her head was pressed into the back of the chair, and he knew he must attempt to cajole her out of this mood or lose her to anxiety for the rest of the evening.Sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t try to shake her out of it, literally take her by the shoulders, if it wouldn’t be a kindness, but he couldn’t bring himself to do such a thing, not when she had been so dreadfully ill, not when he could still remember in every terrible detail the night in the hospital when she had almost slipped away.Instead, he perched on the side of the chair and, threading an arm clumsily round her shoulders, rocked her gently, whispering softly, “There, there, my darling girl.It’ll all be fine, you wait and see.”She murmured, “I’m so sorry, Dadda, I’m such a nuisance to you.”“A nuisance? That you could never be.Never!” Saying this, he remembered with a surge of emotion the only time he had felt truly frustrated by Maeve’s dependence, the only time she had actually prevented him from doing anything he dearly wanted to do, and that was four days ago when he had longed with every instinct in his body to go to London and find out what had happened to Catherine and, while he was about it, to take Ben Galitza apart with his bare hands.She was quieter now and he dared to hope that the worst might be over.He talked about the summer ahead, about the things they would do together, how he was going to take time off, a month or more, and spend it with her at Morne, how she was to invite friends, as many or as few as she wanted.When he finally ran short of words, he hummed softly to her, a poor rendering of “Some Enchanted Evening’.The thin summer light began to deepen imperceptibly, bringing the brilliant yellows and blues and golds that dominated the room into glaring focus
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