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number then hit the dial button. A sharp beep from the machine, and the display on the screen read out no service.
    Then he fumbled for the walkie-talkie, switched that on and called out the names of his friends again. And then that other voice he dimly remembered.
    ‘Davey? Hello, Davey?’
    Only the crackle of static came back to him.
    He was desperate for water, his mouth arid and furry. Had they left him any water? He lifted his neck up just the few inches that were available before his head struck the lid, saw the glint of the bottle, reached down. Famous Grouse whisky.
    Disappointed, he broke the seal, unscrewed the cap and took a swig. For a moment just the sensation of liquid felt like balm in his mouth; then it turned to fire, burning his mouth, then his gullet. But almost instantly after that he felt a little better. He took another swig. Felt a little better still, and took a third, long swig before he replaced the cap.
    He closed his eyes. His headache felt a tiny bit better now. The desire to pee was receding.
    ‘Bastards…’ he murmured.

8
    Ashley looked like a ghost. Her long brown hair framed a face that was as colourless as the patients’ in the forest of drip lines, ventilators and monitors in the beds in the ward behind her. She was leaning against the reception counter of the nursing station in the Intensive Care Unit of the Sussex County Hospital. Her vulnerability made her seem even more beautiful than ever, to Mark.
    Muzzy from a sleepless night, in a sharp suit and immaculate black Gucci loafers, he walked up to her, put his arms around her, and held her tight. He stared at a vending machine, a drinking water fountain, and a payphone in a perspex dome. Hospitals always gave him the heebie-jeebies. Ever since he’d come to visit his dad after his near fatal heart attack and saw this man who had once been so strong now looking so frail, so damned pathetic and useless – and scared. He squeezed Ashley as much for himself as for her. Close to her head, a cursor blinked on a green computer screen.
    She clung to him as if he were a lone spar in a storm-tossed ocean. ‘Oh, Christ, Mark, thank God you’re here.’
    One nurse was busy on the phone; it sounded like she was talking to a relative of someone in the unit, the other one behind the counter, close to them, was tapping out something on a keyboard.
    ‘This is terrible,’ Mark said. ‘Unbelievable.’
    Ashley nodded, swallowing hard. ‘If it wasn’t for your meeting, you would have been—’
    ‘I know. I can’t stop thinking about it. How’s Josh?’
    Ashley’s hair smelled freshly washed, and there was a trace of garlic on her breath, which he barely noticed. The girls had had a hen party last night, arranged in some Italian restaurant.
    ‘Not good. Zoe’s with him.’ She pointed and Mark followed the line of her finger, across several beds, across the hiss-clunk of ventilators, and the blinking of digital displays, to the far end of the ward, where he could see Josh’s wife sitting on a chair. She was dressed in a white T-shirt, tracksuit top and baggy trousers, body stooped, her straggly blonde ringlets covering her face.
    ‘Michael still hasn’t turned up. Where is he, Mark? Surely to God you must know?’
    As the nurse finished her call, the phone beeped and she started talking again.
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
    She looked at him hard. ‘But you guys have been planning this for weeks – Lucy said you were going to get even with Michael for all the practical jokes he played on the others before they got married.’ As she took a step back from him, tossing hair from her forehead, Mark could see her mascara had run. She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.
    ‘Maybe the guys had a last-minute change of mind,’ he said. ‘Sure, they’d come up with all kinds of ideas, like lacing his drink and putting him on a plane to some place, but I managed to talk them out of it – at least I