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29

I walked across the fields feeling slightly choked; slightly sad for the loss of something I'd never even had. But I felt implausibly calm too, as if things were finally slotting into place. Clunk, clunk, clunk. I was squaring away, as my dad would have said, and even though I was pretty sure I'd never be able to square Ludo away entirely – was pretty sure my heart would always falter when he walked into a room and then rattle on at an unsettling pace – well, hey, that wasn't too terrible, was it? Wasn't too shameful? And if, too, I really had been the anti-freeze his atrophied heart had needed after Estelle, the catalyst for kicking on again, then I was glad. And proud. And very flattered. It was not an unpleasant feeling. One that would stay with me a while. For many years, I'd hazard. What was that Yeats poem Ant liked? When you are old and grey and full of sleep… dream of the soft look your eyes had once… de dum de dum. Something like that. And something about the love of a good woman, too. Or was that another poem? I smiled. A secret smile, down at my shoes. But as my path took me, for the second time that day, past the little brick and flint cottage with the pointed Hansel and Gretel roof, and my eyes leaked through the leaded windows, not to the dun-coloured walls of my childhood, but to a much brighter, more modern room, a gilt-framed mirror where once the sentimental print had hung, my smile faded and I became less pleased with myself. Less proud.

I got into my car and sat there a moment. Don't kid yourself, Evie. Or, if you must, then at least attempt to match up. To be that good woman. Square away some more. Clean up completely. I started the car, turned it round in the yard and, leaving a cloud of dust hanging suspended behind me, headed off down the lanes and back towards Oxford, in the direction of the Banbury Road, and ultimately, Summertown.

Summertown was as breezy and bustling as ever, its wide pavements ensuring it lived up to its name, as, on a pleasant day like today, the cafés and bars spilled onto them. Most of the roads leading off the main drag were leafy and affluent, but not the one I was looking for. I took the one I had a hunch about and cruised down: past the Launderette, the fish-and-chip shop, the 7-Eleven, but after some shabby Edwardian houses broke out in a rash around the corner, the road finally committed suicide at a dead end. Damn. I turned round, sped back to the main road and tried another. Ah. This looked more promising. Another chip shop, another row of dismal houses, one or two sprayed with Arabic graffiti, and then, right at the end, a double-fronted cream house with peeling green windows, which also claimed to be St Michael's Hospice.

I parked, walked through the front garden, such as it was – a tangle of weeds and plastic dustbins – and rang the bell. After a moment light footsteps came down the hall and a tired, fragile-looking woman in a white housecoat opened the door. I explained who I'd come to see and she stood back wordlessly to let me in. She asked me to sign the visitors' book, then led me down a corridor, pointed to a door, and disappeared.

It was unbearably hot and the soles of my shoes clung to the plastic tiles underfoot. The cloying smell of unaired beds and institutional food left to moulder in stainless steel was oppressive. I breathed through my mouth and pushed on through the swing doors the woman had indicated. Six beds, three down each side, were occupied by wraithlike women, mostly catheterized, and all in various catatonic states: one or two were asleep, but the ones who were awake gazed straight ahead with dead eyes, their heads not moving as I came in.

Maroulla was in the bed at the far end on the left, eyes shut, mouth open. Her once-brown face was faded and peppered with pigmentation spots, her eye sockets hollow. I stood a moment at the end of her bed before moving to sit on the grey plastic chair beside her. A tiny trickle of saliva dribbled from the corner of her crimped mouth. I gazed at this once energetic, noisy woman, who'd chased