Dark Room

cleaned myself properly afterwards. I've been worrying about that.'

THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC, SALISBURY-6:30 P.M.

Alan Protheroe looked in on Jinx later that afternoon and found her walking with gritty determination about her room. 'I'm not going out in a wheelchair again,' she told him angrily. 'I hadn't realized quite how sensitive I am to being stared at. It was a deeply humiliating experience.' She jabbed a finger at her bandages. 'When's this idiotic thing coming off my eye?'

'Probably tomorrow morning,' he said, wondering if it was only humiliation that had sparked her anger. It would be a while, he thought, before she felt confident enough to admit she remembered anything. 'You've an appointment at Odstock Hospital for nine-thirty. All being well, it'll be removed then.'

She came to a halt beside her dressing table. 'Thank God for that. I feel like Frankenstein's monster at the moment.'

His amiable face creased into a smile. 'You don't look like him.'

There was a short silence.

'Are you married, Dr. Protheroe?'

'I was. My wife died of breast cancer four years ago.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Why did you want to know?' he asked her.

Straightforward curiosity. You're too nice to be running around free, and most of your shirts have buttons missing. 'Because it's six-thirty on a Friday evening in June and I was wondering why you were still here. Do you live in?'

He nodded. 'In a flat upstairs.'

'Children?'

'One daughter at university, who's nineteen and very strong-minded.'

'I'm not surprised. You've probably been using her as a guinea pig for your theories on individual responsibility since she was knee-high to a grasshopper.'

'Something like that.'

She eyed him curiously. 'As a matter of interest, what happens when one of your patients chooses a wrong set of values? Acts in bad faith, in other words. I can't believe they all toe the existentialist Protheroe line. It's a statistical impossibility.'

He lowered himself into one of the chairs, stretched his long legs in front of him, and clasped his hands behind his head. 'That's an extraordinarily loaded question but I'll have a stab at an answer. By 'wrong' you presumably mean that they leave the clinic with the same problems they came in with? In other words, their time here hasn't persuaded them that another modus vivendi might be worth considering?'

'That's a simplistic way of putting it, but it'll do, I suppose.'

He lifted an amused eyebrow. 'Then the simplistic answer is that my methods haven't worked for them, and they either remain as they are or seek alternative therapy. But they're usually the ones who discharge themselves within forty-eight hours because they didn't want to be here in the first place.'

Like me, she thought. 'You must have your share of backsliders, though. I can't see Matthew sticking to the straight and narrow once he's away from here.'

'I think you're underestimating him. He's only been here two weeks, you know. Give him another month and then tell me he won't make it.'

She looked appalled. 'A month? How long am I supposed to stay here then?'

'As long or as short as you like.'

'That's not an answer. How long does my father expect you to keep me?'

'This isn't a prison, Jinx. I don't keep anyone.'

'Then I can leave tomorrow after the bandages have been removed?'

'Of course you can, subject to what I told you on Wednesday. You're still not physically fit, so I'd feel duty- bound to inform your father that you'd discharged yourself.'

She smiled faintly. 'Does that mean I'm mentally fit?'

'My impression, for what it's worth, is that you're tough as old boots.' He leaned forward and studied her face closely. 'I'm having some difficulty squaring this rugged self-reliance of yours with the picture the police gave me of a heartbroken, vulnerable woman who drove her car at a wall.'

She pressed a fingertip to her eyelid to hide the awful rush of tears. 'So am I,' she said after a moment, 'but I've read the piece in the newspaper over and over again and I can't come up with another explanation.' She lowered her hand to look at him. 'I phoned Meg's answering machine today. I thought if I could only talk to her and Leo, they could at least tell everyone that I wasn't upset about him going.'

'Is that something you can remember?'

'You mean not being upset?' He nodded and she shook her head. 'No, I'm just so certain that it wouldn't have worried me.'

'Why?'

Because it didn't worry me last time. 'Because,' she said out loud, 'I didn't want Leo myself.' She looked away from him, fearful perhaps of seeing his disbelief. 'I know it sounds like sour grapes but I'm relieved I don't have to marry him. I can remember hanging around the studio till all hours just to avoid going home and spending cozy evenings with him, and I don't think it was cold feet about the wedding. I was beginning to actively dislike him.' She gave a hollow laugh. 'So much for rugged self-reliance. Why was I marrying someone I