The Pure in Heart Read Free

she comes here but shedoesn’t talk about it.’
    ‘What exactly happened?’
    ‘The usual – cold then chest infection now pneumonia … how many times have we been there? But I don’t think her body is up to fighting it now. She’s barely responded to the treatment and Chris said they’re now wondering how aggressive that ought to be.’
    ‘Poor little Martha.’
    Her brother’s voice, concerned and tender, echoed in her ears as Catput down the phone. Tears filled her eyes, as they did so easily in pregnancy … even the sight, that afternoon, of one of her daughter’s soft toys, lying scrumpled on the grass after it had been left out in the rain had made Cat soften to weeping. She heaved herself awkwardly off the sofa. She had forgotten almost everything about how it felt to be expecting a baby. Sam was eight and a half nowand Hannah seven. They had not planned thisthird child. She and Chris were the only two partners in their general practice and stretched to the limits of their time and energy. But though she meant to take the odd surgery as soon as she could, realistically Cat knew that she would be out of action for the next six months and part-time at work for the year after that. Besides, now the baby wascoming and she had got used to the idea, she wanted to be at home with it and give more time to the other two, not rush back to the exhausting grind of medical practice. There would not be a fourth child. This one was precious. She was going to enjoy it.
    She lay on the sofa trying to sleep but unable to stop the cycle of thought. How odd and yet how typical of their father to make the phone callto Venice and in those terms. ‘ If you want to see your sister alive, you’d better come home .’
    Yet how often did he ever see Martha? Cat had scarcely heard the girl’s name cross his lips though he had once infuriated her by calling Martha ‘the vegetable’ in Sam and Hannah’s hearing. Was he ashamed of having a brain-damaged child? Or angry? Did he blame himself or Meriel?
    And what had been thereasoning behind his call to Simon, the other child for whom he had precious little time?
    Simon, the person she loved, aside from her husband and children, above all other.
    The cat Mephisto appeared from nowhere to leap softly on to the sofa beside her and settle down.
    All three of them slept.

Three
    The streets were dark and almost deserted though it was barely ten o’clock. But the lights of Bevham General Hospital blazed out and as Simon Serrailler turned into the slip road an ambulance overtook him, siren wailing, speeding towards A & E.
    He had always liked working at night, liked it from his first days as a uniformed constable on the beat, liked it now on the few occasions whenhe had to take charge of a night-time operation. He was fired up by the sense of emergency, the way everything was intensified, every movement and word seemed significant, as well as the strange closeness engendered by the knowledge that they were people working on important and sometimes dangerous jobs, while the rest of the world slept.
    He got out of his car in the half-empty car park and lookedat the great slab of hospital building, nine storeys high and with various lower blocks at angles to it.
    Venice was light years away, yet for a second he had a flash picture of the cemetery at San Michele as it had been in the cool light of that Sunday morning,of the ribbons of gravel path and the pale, still, grieving statues. There, as here at the hospital now, so much emotion was somehowheld, packed into every crevice, so that you breathed and felt and smelled it.
    He walked in through the glass doors. By day, the hospital foyers were more like the concourse of an airport, with a mall of small shops and a constant passage of people. Bevham General was a teaching hospital, centre of excellence for several specialties, with a huge number of staff and patients. Now, when outpatientareas and offices were dark, the real hospital