‘It’s okay.’

‘You must hate me.’

‘I don’t hate you.’ She opened the packet of custard creams she had picked up at the corner shop.

‘Here, help yourself.’

‘You’re so ...’ Phil shook his head again, searching for the right word, ‘... so nice. You always were. Always forgiving me.’

Pru said nothing.

‘It got on my nerves in the end,’ he went on. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘That’s why I went off with Blanche. She doesn’t take any crap. Stands up for herself, Blanche does.’’Right.’

‘I’m just trying to explain.’

‘You don’t have to,’ said Pru. ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

He finished his tea and rose cautiously to his feet.

‘Time I made a move. Blanche’ll be waiting for me with a frying pan.’ His smile was crooked.

‘And it won’t be for making bacon and eggs.’

‘Well, good luck.’ Pru smiled back.

At the door Phil glanced around the room again, his estate agent’s eye taking in the rotting window frames and damp walls.

‘I really am sorry, Toby,’ he used his old nickname for her, ‘about this place.’

But not quite sorry enough, Pru couldn’t help noticing, to stick his hand in his pocket and maybe give her a couple of hundred pounds out of his winnings.

‘Take care of yourself,’ she said as Phil made his way downstairs.

He grinned, evidently at the prospect of having to avoid low-flying frying pans.

‘You too, sweetheart. And thanks for putting me up.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Pm. "Bye.’

Chapter 32

‘You’re doing what?’ squealed Dulcie later that afternoon when Pru turned up on her doorstep and explained the situation so far.

‘I saw the consultant at lunchtime. He’s booked me in for surgery tomorrow morning,’ Pru explained. ‘The only problem is, I thought I’d be flat out, but apparently they don’t do that any more, they only give you local anaesthetic.’

Dulcie’s stomach cartwheeled at the prospect.

‘Gross.’

‘I know.’ Pru pulled a face. ‘So I wondered if you’d come with me. Kind of hold my hand, give me a bit of moral support.’

Dulcie was moderately squeamish but she adored ER. Maybe if she pretended she was watching it on telly .. .

‘What’s the surgeon like?’

Pru half smiled.

‘Tall, dark, quite dishy actually.’

Dulcie briefly fantasised exchanging steamy looks over the operating masks with Dr Doug Ross.

‘Okay, of course I’ll come.’

‘I might ask Liza too.’

Liza, Dulcie decided, could exchange steamy looks with someone far less attractive, one of the hospital porters maybe. She wanted to keep Doug to herself.

‘We’ll both be there,’ she promised Pru. ‘We’ll have an ear each.’

‘And don’t tell anyone,’ Pru pleaded. ‘I’ve already spoken to Eddie. I told him a friend’s invited me to stay with her ather villa in Majorca. As far as he’s concerned I’m away on holiday for two weeks. That’s how long the bandages have to stay on,’ she added, looking embarrassed. ‘I know it’s stupid, but I just don’t want anyone to know.’

Dulcie mimed zipping up her mouth. Then a thought belatedly struck her and she unzipped it.

‘But how can you afford it? I thought you were strapped.’

Pru ran briefly through the events of last night. Dulcie listened agog. When Pru finished, she broke into applause.

‘But I had no idea you were so desperate to have it done! Why didn’t you say before? I could have lent you the cash.’

Pru said levelly, ‘I didn’t want to borrow the money.’

‘Oh, right.’ Dulcie’s expressive eyebrows said it all. ‘But you didn’t mind stealing it.’

Pru looked worried.

‘I only took as much as I needed, eleven hundred pounds—’

‘Pru, come on, I’m joking! What am I going to do, call the police?’

‘He still had eight hundred left,’ Pru rattled on, as if needing to reassure herself.

‘Well personally I think you’re mad,’ Dulcie declared. ‘If it had been me I’d have nicked the lot.’

Sadly for Dulcie the surgeon spent far too much time concentrating on Pru’s ears to have any left over for smouldering eye-meets with her. Performing the surgery appeared to be uppermost in his mind.

Since he was dishy, this was disappointing to say the least.

‘Why should you be bothered?’ said Liza, when they retired to the coffee room afterwards. ‘I thought Liam was the only man for you.’

Dulcie shrugged. The thing was, she was beginning to doubt if she was the only woman for Liam. Okay, so he’d gone out and bought her an exercise-your-way-through-pregnancy video, but that had been the most romantic gesture of the past fortnight. More and more often recently, he had been phoning up to tell her he had to work late at the club.

Dulcie’s fantasy – apart from the ER, Doug Ross-type one – that Liam would whisk her down to Mallory’s and tell her to choose a dazzling, money-no-object diamond ring had so far failed to materialise. Neither had he suggested living together.

Worst of all, when Dulcie had visited Brunton Manor last week, Imelda had been wearing a horribly self-satisfied smirk of the I-know-something-you-don’t-know variety.

It was hard to maintain the rosy glow of pregnancy when you suspected you were being laughed at -- or even worse, pitied – behind your back.

‘Here we are then,’ announced the surgeon, entering the coffee room with his arm around Pru’s shoulders. The pressure bandage holding her ears in place looked comical and her hair was sticking out like Ken Dodd’s but she was clearly relieved the ordeal was over.

‘All ready to go home,’ the surgeon purred. ‘Now I’ve explained to Pm, she has to take things easy for a few days. She needs cosseting.’

He beamed at Dulcie and Liza. He was using his jolly, be extra-nice-to-the-private-patient voice.

Dulcie decided he wasn’t so gorgeous after all without his sexy operating mask; he was just a smarmy, patronising git.

‘So, can I leave her in your safe hands, girls? Promise me you’ll take good care of her.’

Dulcie didn’t even care when she realised all his attention was on Liza. The man was practically drooling; he obviously fancied her rotten. And he was wearing a wedding ring. Unfaithful bastard.

‘We can’t cosset you in your bedsit,’ Dulcie told Pru, who was looking horribly pale and in need of rest already. ‘Come on,’ she reached for her thin arm, ‘you can come and stay with me.’

Telling Pru he had been banned for six months had been a panic reaction on Eddie’s part, simply the only excuse he’d been able to come up with to ensure he could carry on seeing her on a regular basis. If she were no longer driving him around, he would be reduced to catching the occasional brief glimpse of her at the club.

Eddie knew it was stupid, not to mention expensive, but he didn’t care. He looked forward to their time together. He could talk to Pru more easily than any other woman he knew. He could relax with her. She made him feel good.

He had felt horribly guilty when, on the phone yesterday, she had apologised over and over again for letting him down.

‘I know it’s short notice,’ she had falteringly explained, ‘but my friend begged me to go and see her ... I’m really sorry to let you down like this ...’

Pru was such a terrible liar, Eddie knew something was up. His stomach contracted with fear at the possibility that Pru might be heading off to the sun with another man ... though if this was the case, why would she feel the need to lie? She was effectively single, she could do whatever she liked, with whoever she liked.

Eddie hated the idea but he had no right to say so. Miserably he wished Pru a happy holiday; another big lie.

At least he had his licence back. Pru wasn’t inconveniencing him in the way she thought. Eddie just wished, as he drove Arthur and himself to Bristol that evening, he could stop torturing himself imagining what she might be getting up to on a sun-drenched beach in Majorca.

As he parked outside Elmlea nursing home he noticed one of the other residents, a bright-eyed old dear with a walking stick, sitting on one of the wooden benches watching him.

‘No dogs inside,’ she called across to Eddie when he let Arthur leap out of the car. ‘Matron won’t allow it; they might widdle on the lino. Then we’d have residents skidding in all directions.’ She cackled with laughter. ‘Fractured femurs galore.’

‘I know,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m just letting him out for a two-minute mn.’

‘Two-minute widdle, more like.’ Still smirking, the old dear held out a gnarled hand. ‘Here, you can leave him with me. I’ll look after him.’

‘His name’s Arthur.’ Eddie passed her the lead.

‘My late husband’s name.’ Up close, the woman’s eyes were astonishing, almost kingfisher blue.

‘He used to widdle everywhere too, come the end.’

Cautiously, Arthur sniffed her lisle-stockinged leg.

‘Not me,’ the woman told the dog briskly. ‘Still continent, thank you very much.’

By the time Eddie re-emerged from the nursing home he found Arthur draped across the rest of the bench with his head on the old woman’s tweed lap. He was fast asleep and snoring like a train.

‘Getting more like my husband by the minute.’ The woman fondly stroked Arthur’s ears.

‘Well, thanks for keeping an eye on him,’ said Eddie. ‘So where is she?’

‘Who?’

‘That pretty girl of yours. Dumped you, has she? All over now?’

‘You mean Pm?’ Eddie hesitated then said awkwardly, ‘She’s away on holiday. A fortnight in Majorca.’

‘Why didn’t you go with her?’

‘Well ... she’s gone to stay with a friend. A female friend.’ The old woman’s straggly eyebrows lifted in amusement. ‘What, you mean she’s a lesbian?’

‘No. Of course not.’