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'And little Russell's gone up to his room. Said he wanted to leave.'

Roley's stomach lurched. 'He hasn't left, has he?'

'Where would he go?' she scoffed. 'Back inside?'

'How much of that have you had?' asked Roley, lifting the decanter.

'What are you implying, Charles Roley?' she demanded with what he guessed was mock severity. 'Never touch the stuff. Well, not much. Not often.' She sniggered. 'And I'm still in full possession of my faculties, thank you very much.'

'It's the faculties Watson and the others might possess that worry me,' said Roley, sighing, flopping into the chair next to her. 'The ones I helped to unleash.'

'The devil finds work for idle hands to do,' said Maria, flatly.

'It's over, isn't it?' he said. 'All over. Dear me, what a mess. Where can we go from here?'

Maria got up and sat on the arm of his chair. 'I'm not going to let you sit here and stew in it all alone, Charles Roley. We'll be all right.'

'Will we?'

'Of course we will. You just wait.'

Roley placed his sandwich on the table, untouched, pouring a glass of sherry for himself instead. He drank it down and closed his eyes. He wasn't a young man any more: he was old, fading. Falling, all the way down.

'Promise?'

Maria slid down the side of the chair, pressing herself against him. He didn't protest. He thought of his mother, of cuddling up to her when he was small. He wanted to believe her.

'I promise, my love, I promise.'

***

Lucy stood outside Watson's door, still wondering what she should do.

Then she heard him softly call

her name, although the door was still closed.

'I'm here,' she said, opening the door and walking through, deciding to brazen it out. 'That's a good trick of yours.'

He smiled. 'Would you like me to show you how to do it?' Lucy shrugged.

'What would you like most of all, in all the world?' Davydd asked.

Lucy shook her head. 'Lots of things. Things that could never be mine.'

'Why?'

'Because the world doesn't work like that.'

'We need a new world, then.' He smiled. 'And a different sky to cover it.'

Her heart seemed to freeze. He knew everything, everything about her.

Every hope and dream, she was sure, everything.

He was just looking at her, still smiling faintly. She closed her eyes. He knew her, fully. It was be who would judge her.

'What's happening to me?' Lucy felt her voice starting to squeak in her throat.

'You are being reborn. A second chance.'

'I can't be. I don't deserve that.'

'You don't deserve to feel new?'

'No. I am lost, fallen.'

'We have all of us fallen, Lucy,' Davydd said. 'Like apples from a tree.

Things crawl inside us and we begin to rot.' He smiled, kissed her fully on the lips. Still she didn't open her eyes. 'But our fall has been well guided.

And now we rise, don't we? Now! Can take you higher. Ever higher.'

Lucy looked at him now, wide-eyed and hopeful, almost too afraid to ask.

'And I you?'

He kissed her again. 'Oh, yes...' His hands slipped round her waist. 'It makes sense to me now, you see. All those despairing times, those many, many times... All along we were being groomed for strength. For power.'

Lucy nodded, a wide, silly smile, as if she were drunk. She felt it stretching her face. 'Waiting for a new sky to form through the window.'

'New,' agreed Davydd. 'Untainted by pain, or loss, or regret.' His own smile was cold. '"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."'

Lucy nodded. She felt weak beside him. It would feel so good to be strong.

Every scintilla of strength they'd bled out of her in sanitariums and hospitals

- dumped in with lunatics, drunks and halfwits - he'd found again, had gathered it up, had it to offer her.

There was no decision to be taken here.

5.5

All you got was hassle. Martha Wynshaw was sick of changing beds, sick of dishpan hands, and sick to death of her boss telling her she didn't do any of it well enough. It wasn't like it was the Dorchester, was it? Some filthy little guest house off Piccadilly where if you rented a room