A Finer End

accusing finger at Jack. ‘She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. You and your daft ideas, and your daft friends — you’ve done this to her. We were happy on our own before you came. We had a good life. And now — now nothing will ever be the same. Maybe she’d be better off dead.’
    ‘Andrew! You can’t mean that!’
    ‘Can’t I?’ Andrew turned and disappeared through the swing doors.
    Jack stared after him. The man was utterly mad. Shaken, he rang the bell for admittance to the ICU. It was not Maggie who answered his summons, but an older, heavy-set nurse whose name badge read ‘Joan’. ‘You’re here to see Winifred?’ she asked.
    ‘How is she?’
    ‘Her heart’s still playing up a bit, and that’s causing her blood pressure to drop.’
    ‘But she’ll be all right? Can I see her?’
    ‘We seem to have got her settled down again for the time being.’ Joan glanced at her watch, then said kindly, ‘Fifteen minutes. Then I’ll throw you out on your ear.’
    Jack eased himself into the chair by Winnie’s bed and took her hand. It seemed to him that it felt cooler than it had that morning. He spoke to her quietly, stroking the soft skin on the inside of her wrist, telling her about his day and his visit to Fiona. ‘You’ve had a good many visitors,’ he Continued, ‘and Andrew was here when I—’
    Was it his imagination, or had her fingers moved? He gripped her hand more tightly and gazed at her face. There! Surely her eyelids flickered, surely he felt an infinitesimal change in her breathing. ‘Nurse!’ he called, and Joan came immediately from the next cubicle.
    ‘I was talking to her — I think she moved her hand, and blinked.’
    ‘Good, that’s very good,’ said Joan, checking the monitors. ‘She knows you’re here, and she wants to respond. She’s just not quite there yet.’ The nurse scrutinized Jack with a professional eye. ‘And I’d say you’re about done in. Why don’t you go get yourself a bite to eat in the canteen, then come back for another little visit? Are those her things you’ve brought?’ She nodded towards the carrier bag beside Jack’s chair.
    Joan helped him set up the small CD player beside the bed, and as he left he heard the opening bars of the Palestrina ‘Agnus Dei’ he had chosen — one of Winnie’s favourite pieces.
    In the canteen, he ate his sandwich mechanically. He couldn’t get Andrew Catesby’s words out of his mind. Why would Andrew think that someone Winnie had met through Jack would want to hurt her? And how could he possibly say that Winnie would be better off dead than with him? Were Andrew’s feelings for his sister even more twisted than he had suspected?
    A horrifying thought struck him. Had it been not his voice that had triggered Winnie’s brief response a few moments ago, but his mention of Andrew’s name?
     
    Jack... Jack’s voice... deep, smooth, a river of sound... Telling her— No, she had lost it. She tried to speak, to tell him she heard, but she seemed to be at the bottom of a well... Couldn’t reach the surface. Her heavy limbs wouldn’t respond. Or did they belong to someone else? There was a light... Somehow she knew that. Was she dead?
    But there was pain. Hers, she was sure, although it was distant, quite separate from her. Not dead, then.
    But where? And how had she got here?
    Andrew — it had to do with Andrew. Something bad about Andrew. Something she must do...
    Weary... too weary... Jack’s voice faded to nothingness, and she drifted away once again, untethered... except that she heard, as if from a great distance, the sound of singing.
     
    By the time he left the lights of Taunton behind, Jack knew he was too exhausted to drive safely. He should have taken a hotel room near the hospital, stayed the night, but he couldn’t summon the energy to turn round.
    All his senses seemed heightened, raw, and the headlamps of the oncoming cars seemed unnaturally bright. He found himself squinting — once even closing his eyes, which terrified him so much he spent the remainder of the journey wide-eyed, gripping the wheel.
    As he turned into his drive, his lights caught a flash of something white within the shelter of the porch. It took a moment to register that it had been a human face. He got out of the car with some apprehension, calling out ‘Hello?’
    He heard a thread of sound in reply, perhaps a whimper. His alarm increasing, he went forward. He had to kneel to be sure of the